


The House that Luck Built

by TheBlackestFrost



Category: American Gods (TV), American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: A war is coming, Angst, F/M, Magic, Sex, Spoilers - book, Spoilers - season 2, rating to increase
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-01-20 19:54:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 89,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21287285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBlackestFrost/pseuds/TheBlackestFrost
Summary: Laura Moon, hauling her oversized cargo up the road in the sunlight, finds a house.Post-finale (season 2).
Relationships: Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney
Comments: 482
Kudos: 306





	1. Chapter 1

She’d found the house after walking half a day, a period almost as close to meditating as she can imagine (if meditating includes hauling an oversized corpse and staying as blank as possible so as not to give in to the rising panic of _why_, _where_, and _how)._

She doesn’t think about the heat and the effect of it on her increasing decay, ignores the flies as she feels her rejuvenation slowly slip away, faster than before.

The house is big, old, cobwebbed, tucked away off a main road. If she wonders at all how she found it, whether the tugging in her chest had truly pulled her off the path, whether the fact that the gate had swung open all too quickly actually meant something, then she’s able to draw on a lifetime of compartmentalising and push it down.

There’s a bedroom towards the back and she dumps her cargo on the dusty but otherwise intact bed, rolling her eyes at how much of it is now covered in that massive body. Always too big, too much space devoured just by existing.

_Bursting into the motel room full of fire and insults and fury, flaming hair and sheer size and booming voice, hand swamping her entire jaw to peer down her throat at his coin before she beat the daylights out of him. _

_Bundled in blankets in the ice cream truck and bitching about the smell._

_Hulking in the passenger seat next to Wednesday, smirking and grinning lasciviously over remembered mermaid antics while she ignored the prick of feeling that made her purse her lips._

_Long arms thick with muscle pinning her against the broadest, warmest chest she has ever felt, their screams as they pass through the hoard not enough to drown out the thumping of his heart in her ear. _

_Massive hands gripping her hips in a stolen, sensuous dreamscape, warm and huge and enough to anchor her._

She leaves the room, intending to close the door behind her so she doesn’t have to really consider how still and silent it is, _he_ is, but suddenly she stops. A prickling on her neck tells her she’s no longer alone, and she turns slowly, her clouding vision seeming to momentarily clear in anticipation as something bright and painfully close to hope flares in her chest.

It dies, immediately, and she hates it for having tried to be there in the first place.

The woman by the bed is tall, willowy and pale, raven hair curling over bare shoulders and chest, long skirts dragging against the floor. Her eyes are dark, so dark, and Laura straightens to her full, deeply unimpressive height.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The woman shoots her a sharp smile and Laura grinds her teeth at yet another theatrical god.

“I am the Morrigan.”

The woman’s accent is thick, rich and lilting, and Laura hears green hills and dark woods and stones and the crash of salt water against rocks.

“Another death god.”

Laura knows without knowing why, and the woman nods, before turning her attention to the oversized corpse on the bed.

Long, slim fingers skim over cuts before sliding up into thick auburn hair, and Laura feels her hand twitch in answer, ignores the itch and prick of anger. If the Morrigan notices she says nothing, and the smile on her face as she moves her hand down to the spear wound, long stopped bleeding, is genuine and tinged with sadness.

She sighs, the sound of wind rustling up a coastline.

“_Ó, trodaí tite. Rí dÚsachtach. Gan aon suíochán ag an mbord. An raibh an cath dóthanach?” _

Laura has no idea what the words mean, though they are similar enough to the rare but virulent cursing and occasionally melancholy murmurs she’d heard from him before to know they’re his words. His language, melodic and out of place.

Dark eyes turn to her but Laura knows the Morrigan is speaking only to him as she leans down, whispers into his ear softly, sensuously.

_“An raibh sé fiúntach é? An raibh sé go leor?”_

Laura leaves the room, refusing to play whose god is it anyway, and heads to the kitchen.

She feels the woman behind her and turns, looking up as dark eyes consider her carefully.

“You are dead, Laura Moon.”

Laura wants to roll her eyes but she’s trying to preserve her rapidly decaying connective tissue, and refuses to waste a perfectly good eye rolls on this nonsense. She settles, as she so often does, on disinterest.

“You don’t say?”

The Morrigan moves her hand, stretching it over Laura’s chest, and on any other day she’s sure she’d feel pissed or combative or _something_ (because even in death and the frustrating numbness that comes with it she’s still experienced more intense emotions than she did while alive). It doesn’t come though, and instead she feels tired, feels every creak of bone in her cold body.

She is so tired of moving and having to keep moving and _wanting _to keep moving where she’s no longer even sure what she’s moving to. At least before (before what, Dead Wife? Before I carked it?) she’d had something to draw energy from, insults and sparking jabs like electricity to jolt and shock and keep her going.

So now a god has her hand on Laura's chest and it's not even the strangest thing that has happened to her today.

She closes her eyes for a moment, so tired.

She becomes aware of a spreading coolness, strange against her already dead skin, like a gentle chill permeating her cells. When her eyes snap open the Morrigan is holding her gaze intently, focused.

“You made a bargain with him.”

Laura is apathetic, not slow. She nods.

“Yeah, resurrection for the coin.” She can’t quite bring up a rueful chuckle, and the Morrigan is still watching her as if she’s got more to say. The goddess inhales, closing her eyes.

“You smell of him.”

_Pressed against him in a field, her barely functioning olfatory system still smelling smoke and whisky and salt._

That she can laugh at.

“I smell of rot and maggots – don’t get me wrong, roadtrips don’t produce the best in hygiene, but I wouldn’t go that far.”

The Morrigan still has her hand flat over Laura’s chest, and the cool spreading is continuing. She knows she should step back, knows there is magic afoot here, but can’t make her legs move. 

“He is all over you. Inside you.”

The coin in her chest flares and Laura feels a rising panic.

_Massive hands gripping her hips, fisting in her hair, eyes never leaving hers as her mouth falls open and she cries out._

She can’t speak, can’t force her words out, can’t argue or deny.

The cool hand that spreads over her chest seems to draw heat from the coin, which throbs in a pantomime of a heartbeat for a moment. The heat flushes her and she feels the pulling and before she can scream, swear, push the hand away, react at all, it is done.

She can feel the emptiness there, not a gaping wound but an awareness of loss and void.

There, in the Morrigan’s pale hand, is the coin.

Laura blinks.


	2. Chapter 2

Her reaction is swift but her blow doesn’t land, the Morrigan somehow further away without having moved, and Laura is struggling too hard against something her brain is telling her and that she can’t quite believe.

Pain. She feels loosened tissues reconnecting, feels her organs shift into their original positions, feels her skin tightening.

She doubles over, vomiting a few early stage maggots that had taken up residence in her chest and a pool of sluggish, congealed blood that must have been there for some time. She gasps, sucking in newly needed air, gasping a second time as her lungs reinflate and force her chest out, then in, the muscles screaming at their sudden use.

She drops to her knees and slumps forward on the floor.

She feels her heart beating, a hard, consistent thudding in her chest, a drum beat, tattoo, rich and exhausting. Her body floods with adrenaline, nerve endings alight and new signals take old pathways, and she feels her eyes force out tears at the pain, the intrusion, the violation and the joy of being alive.

Or, something like it.

Something slightly to the left of alive.

She can feel it thrumming through her, as if her veins were laced with the same warmth of the coin, as if it has been dissolved and entered her now active blood stream. She presses her eyes closed, trying to process the sensation, electric and sparkling and glorious. A thought tickles at her, asks her what this means, what the conditions are, what might be the catch.

As she has discovered (painfully, repeatedly), there’s always a catch.

She lies there, watching a maggot writhe against the cold air and congealed blood next to her, unable to shift against the onslaught she is experiencing. The Morrigan settles herself neatly against the arm of a couch within eyeline. Laura’s eyes, now clear and vision somehow better than ever, pick out the runes against the Morrigan’s bare chest, breasts with white lines carved over them, and watches the goddess observe the coin with interest.

“Such an ancient vestige to reside in a mortal’s chest for so long. I wonder, do you hear it singing for you like he did?”

Laura wants to retort but her hearing, no longer muffled with decaying skin build up, pricks at the lightest, finest ringing. Gentle and bell-like, and she feels deeply, unwarrantedly, aware that the sound is not so much a constant as a greeting. She swallows thickly, forcing air past her vocal cords to produce a weak sound of her own.

“How?”

She’s not asking about the singing coin and they both know it.

The Morrigan smiles, a midnight smile full of secrets and songs, and shrugs gracefully.

“He died. The King is dead, long live the king.”

Laura swallows again, now pushing back nausea at the words, the implication, and the growing awareness that she needs to shower for a week.

“And me?”

So selfish, she hears him in her head, and almost smiles as the Morrigan gives another lazy shrug, this one more artfully nonchalant than the last, and Laura wonders what she’s hiding.

“The coin kept you going, but your pact is done. There is no one to call in the debt. The veil was thin and so…” she makes a hand gesture that appears to capture the term _voila_ perfectly.

“You…you didn’t do this?”

The Morrigan, clearly amused and enjoying herself, shakes her head.

“Not mine to give, not mine to take. Just closing a pact.”

Laura stares. “So…for all you know you’d take it and I’d just have been-“

“Dead, yes. Terribly so. Third time in a row, round and round you go.”

Laura pushes herself up, avoiding her maggot/blood pile, and stands on shaky legs. Her cheeks are still wet from tears flowing freely, but she ignores them in favour of the more pressing issue.

“Fuck. You.”

The Morrigan, still holding the coin, grins. Laura pushes a hand through her (_matted, greasy as a fuckin’ diner dinner, Dead Wife_) hair.

“So…is this permanent?”

The Morrigan cocks her head to the side, as if listening to something, before shaking her head.

“No. These are the last vestiges of belief. They are borrowed only, and they will fade. When they do, you will rot.”

Always with the fucking catch.

“How long?”

The Morrigan shrugs. “Time plays tricks on us all. Sooner, later, does it matter?”

Laura squares her shoulders. “I have a god to kill. I need to know how long I have before I turn back into roadkill.”

_“That ain’t Irish sexy you’re smellin’, it’s Roadkill Rhonda.”_

She ignores the memory of the bright sun and her cigarette and his massive body blocking part of her view to the gates. Ignores the memory of Nancy's sharp smile and that day.

_"All my luck is yours, Dead Wife."_

The Morrigan closes her eyes and Laura sees what she can’t be seeing, ripples as if a face much older, deeply lined, has shimmered to the surface and left just as quickly. The voice that answers her starts ancient before smoothing back to the lilting tones of earlier.

“One moon cycle.”

A month.

It’s longer than any of her other cures have lasted, but that was when she had Shadow as her end game, when she knew she could have her heart beating again, when she was seeking resurrection.

Back when she had a guide to who’s who in gods and their foibles, an insider, a car thief, a back-up...back when she had a Mad Sweeney. 

She ignores the tears that are still flowing (had they fucking waited until this moment and decided to party all at once?) and shivers involuntarily. More time, yes, but borrowed time, and the creeping awareness is already on the back of her neck.

Enjoy this. All good things must come to an end.

There is a kind of exquisite cruelty in slices of life, or rejuvenation, being given only to be revoked again, something beautifully terrible about the reminders of warmth and comfort and nerve endings and strength and needs that are always on a countdown.

The Morrigan, as if reading her mind, smiles. “Is it so different to when you were alive?”

At first Laura can’t answer, too aware that the Laura of weeks ago may have found the whole process of decay academically interesting, something different at least from apathy. If she thinks on it a moment she could chuckle at the college sophomore-esque depth of the comment, _aren’t we all slowing decaying and wasting our pitiful human lives?_

She shakes her head.

“It’s not the same. Yes, we all die; we don’t all get countdowns, and we certainly don’t get fucking front row seats to our own autopsies, or spew up fucking maggots." She looks down at her hands. "We don’t get to see ourselves putrefy.”

The Morrigan is unmoved by her outburst, still twirling the coin between her fingers. “You may be right, Laura Moon. So, what will you do about it?”

Laura thinks about her month.

She could spend it seeking out every bit of alcohol, nicotine, illicit substance and hard dick she could find. Could spend it eating every bit of food and watching her stomach decay. She could go outside and lie in the grass and never, ever get up.

_“So that’s it then…I thought we were gonna save someone.”_

She sighs.

A month to find out where this insane plan was taking everyone, find out how to stop it, find out how to kill a god. And, she supposes, find out how to cure herself so that she could stay alive permanently.

Again the Morrigan seems to catch the tail end of her thoughts and shakes her head.

“Have you not already been given enough?”

Laura Moon does not back down from selfishness. She knows what will be most useful, knows what she needs.

“Fix him.”

The Morrigan tilts her head and Laura huffs.

“The veil is thin, right? So…bring him back, fix him.”

Dark eyes blink and Laura fights the urge to scream, tamping it down and gritting her teeth as the Morrigan watches her silently. She feels her throat constrict and hears that tinkling sound (_is it possible for a coin to sound worried? She refuses to indulge this nonsense_) and forces her voice into a facsimile of calm and supplication.

“Please?”

The tone isn’t quite right but she’s never been one for begging (_apart from for cock, Dead Wife?_) and she can see the goddess straighten slightly.

The Morrigan stares at her a moment.

“You brought him here. Why?”

Laura looks around the house. The cobwebs, the sunlight creating hazy patches where it passes through the dust they’ve disturbed. She’d found it in a clearing, registered a small body of water nearby, made absent note of the large porch. It feels like it’s been standing for a hundred years, one of the old farm houses with no farm around it any more.

She shrugs, impatient and disinterested in this nonsense. “It’s where I came.”

The Morrigan studies her. “No other reason drew you here?”

Laura rolls her eyes. “Honestly, lugging a corpse the size of a horse up a warm road isn’t my idea of a good time. This place was here, so I came.”

The Morrigan is quiet and Laura is so fucking sick of fate or destiny or luck or whatever bullshit they kept assigning to things that she strides forward a few steps.

“Listen, this is your world, not mine – this place was here, so I came. If you know more than that, tell me. If you don’t, just fucking fix him.”

The Morrigan nods at that, and Laura can’t shake the feeling that the goddess knows more about this place than she does.

“I need him alive – I need him to help me kill Wednesday.”

The Morrigan smiles again, not as sharp, and there’s a look in her eyes close to pity (Laura hates, fucking hates, pity).

“An auspicious plan, but one that you will have to execute alone.”

“What aren’t you telling me? Why won’t you fix him?” (_fix, not resurrect? am I fuckin’ appliance, Dead Wife?_)

The Morrigan smiles that midnight smile again. “Everything. And I can’t.”

Laura slams her hand against a chair, hissing in pain when it neither crumbles beneath her strength nor spares her newly active nerves. Before she can do any worse the Morrigan tilts her head again, gesturing to the back room.

“We die. We pass. We are not resurrected, for the life in us is not a human life, nor a human soul.”

_He's always seemed painfully, pitfully human in many ways. A creature of temper and heat. Hazel eyes staring solemnly, jealously, hungrily, furiously. _(And what else, Dead Wife? What else did you see in my eyes that night, or any night?)

She shakes her head. “Maybe for gods, but he’s just…” she can’t quite bring herself to say it, doesn’t even really know what she would say, but the Morrigan notices, and her tone is sharp.

“A leprechaun? You would mock this, after all you have seen, Laura Moon?”

Suddenly they’re back in the room and she’s staring at his stupid giant corpse yet again and can hear the Morrigan behind her, voice splintering as if there were three speakers, building in passion and fury.

“A leprechaun owed a god a debt and took your pathetic life, sent you on a journey you have only just truly started to accept, let alone believe. A leprechaun lost his coin and found it in your chest. Could have followed quietly behind you as you broke apart enough to take his treasure back and instead took you to find resurrection and your true love.”

The last words are mocking and the tears are flowing freely again, though Laura holds herself firm and strong, and refuses to turn. She refuses to think of Shadow and his clear choices and her clear lack of being said choice. She closes her burning eyes and sees gods and goddesses and loas and so much more.

“He begged a goddess to return a favour and resurrect you. Drew you through the hoard, one of the last of it's kind. Betrayed you and made it up to you and failed you and was failed by you. A leprechaun held your decaying body flush with false life and watched you break apart with pleasure.”

Laura’s breathe quickened at the memory, stolen and sweat slicked and heavy in her heart and tucked deep, deep down, pressed under cruel words and crueller parting shots and then…

"A leprechaun found you a pretty potion that would cure all your ills and yet the bottle remains stoppered."

Laura feels her eyes widen and struggles to breathe, but the Morrigan's many layered voice just continues its dark path.

“This is the culmination of a story much longer than you can imagine. An ancient story. A king. A god. A creature of myth and legend and now…”

She lets it hang and Laura swallows. The Morrigan’s voice is gentler, but final, the lilt and cadence of a song in her words once more.

“He will be returned to where he came; myth and faded memory.”

Laura feels cold lips against her ear. “Say your farewells, Laura Moon.”

She shakes her head. She didn’t have words before, she doesn’t have them now.

She considers something snarky (_bit unoriginal don’t you think, love?_). She feels something hard pressed into her palm and turns to snap at the woman behind her (“I don’t want it, it’s not mine, just…give it back to him”) but the Morrigan is gone, and when she turns back to the bed there are only rumpled sheets and flecks of dried blood.

Laura is alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Laura stares at the blood flecks and takes a deep breath.

If she were someone else this might be the part where she breaks down in heavy, wracking sobs until everything is drained out of her. Instead she shakes her head, exhaling slowly, feeling the tears her newly operational body had already poured down her cheeks. 

She is not someone else, she is Laura Moon (_does the name still feel good, love, or is it a suit that don't quite fit anymore?_). She draws on every long night spent pretending not to hear her drunken father ranting, every afternoon dodging something thrown, every tear pushed back before they were seen and a negative situation escalated further. She pushes down everyone else's shit and focuses on her own; digs deep for that well of selfishness.

She pushes it down, and starts with the basics.

She scratches at her hair, making a moue of distaste at the grease and shifting insects. She needs to be clean.

She presses a hand over her chest, feels her heart beat.

_Pressed against him in the field she'd felt it, the heavy thump of his heart against her face, and while being dragged through that insane messed up vortex he called his hoard it had anchored her. _

The heart beat is strong but unsteady, like it’s trying to remember what a heartbeat should sound like, like it knows it's playing a part and is trying to learn its lines. As she inhales it feels off, as if it’s an indulgence but not strictly a necessity. If she thinks too long about it she will gag or her mind will snap, so she accepts that, for now, this is alive.

An illusion of wholeness.

Just to the left of alive.

She lets out a shaky breath. 

She finds the bathroom.

To the right there is a freestanding tub, one that looks large and deep enough that she feels a wrench in her gut, remembering a night.

_"Meat’s gonna slide off you sooner or later, Dead Wife, sooner, if you keep soaking it in hot water. All that connective tissue holding you together...well, that's gonna liquefy. You'll find yourself on a hot, humid summer day just cooking in that moist heat. And you're going to fall right off the bone. When you do, I'm going to reach up under those ribs and I'm going to pluck that coin out of you like a berry."_

She chooses the shower. This time. 

There’s water in the pipes and she gives herself over to the bliss of a shower, using an ancient bar of soap as shampoo and body wash all in one. She watches the sweat and grime, laden with dead skin cells, slough off her body. She digs her fingers into her hair, lathering and rinsing and repeating, ignoring the insects that come away with the soap foam. She opens wide, swallowing cool water and feeling the excess slip from her mouth and slide down her chest.

She watches the rivulets carve their way across her torso before following their path with her hands. Her skin, newly sensitive, twitches and goosebumps appear as she skims over her collarbone, over her breasts, her fingers skimming nipples that pucker and pebble. 

_She remembers her chest hanging open, raw and rotten, breasts tattered away under a red bomber jacket. Ostara viewing her carefully while he'd skulked around. _

_"I don't want her dead...selfish reasons."_

She knows if she let her hand slip lower, over her ribs and stomach, down to her centre she would quickly feel that dull pulling in her abdomen, the heavy throb of pleasure. 

_"It's touch they miss the most."_

She scrubs until her skin is pink and the water has become cold and ignores how high the shower head is (dropping straight from the ceiling, a wide circle releasing water like a rain cloud above her) because who fucking cares about the height of it.

_"These fuckin’ motels are made for children.”_

_Rolling her eyes as he drunkenly complains about cramped quarters in a whisky thickened accent, eyes looking around for someone to take out his aggression on._

She steps out feeling even cleaner than she can remember. There’s a mirror in the hallway, full length, set at just her height, and she studies herself against the midday sunlight glinting against the white walls.

She's dropped weight she doesn't really have to spare, but she's not too concerned. The gauntness doesn't bother her because she's not looking for what she already knows, but for what is new. 

It's subtle but there.

The weight of decay is missing from her eyes, her lips are full and pink rather than chapped and split, her skin is less mottled and grey. Her cheeks are peachy, her flesh pink in places from the vigorous scrubbing, and her eyes are sparkling.

She sucks in a breath.

She's not alive, she can see that. All the wonderful machinations are there, breath and blood and touch, but she can see the sheen in her eyes, the luminescence of her skin, and knows there is something other than natural life keeping her going. It’s a lot like being dead but with everything running, only it is for show. She's being powered by the coin like before, only now it's an essence left behind, capable of energising her body but not sustaining it.

Just to the left of alive.

Always, _always_ with the fucking catch.

Wet hair sticks to her shoulders and she feels a shiver of real cold and it’s so close to pleasure she almost closes her eyes.

She stretches, walks around enjoying the cold air on her skin as she studies the house. Upstairs are another two bedrooms, empty and dusty but otherwise clean, one with a wrought iron bedframe and mattress. There's a thick blanket and pillow neatly folded at the end, and a deep inhale suggests no mildew or damp.

It feels left there just for her. 

There's a ladder to an empty attic, dusty but clear of spiderwebs and grime. Through the windows she can see the woods behind the house, dark and thick.

She moves back down and opens the bedroom window, steps out onto a small balcony, studies the woods around her. There’s salt in the air whistling over her skin and she wonders how far she is from the sea.

The house is set in a clearing near a small valley. The path she'd walked up disappears back between trees. A large tree is in the front yard, massive enough to be old, and the trees behind her disappear into thick woods. To the left of the house she can see the ground begin to drop towards the valley below, flat and wide, full of wild flowers.

_She remembers lying in the flowers having given up. _

_"I thought we were goin' to save someone."_

Her stomach growls and she grimaces.

The wind has cooled her skin and she moves inside and back downstairs. The coin is there on the wooden table in the kitchen, and she reaches out a hand. It’s warm, warm enough that she presses it gently to her chest for a moment and feels the spread there before pulling it away to study its markings. 

The heat in her hand continues to draw her attention, feeling it suffuse her, and on a hunch she flicks her fingers against the chair she had hit earlier.

The chair snaps and she smiles.

Her stomach growls again, reminding her, and she nods to herself.

The cupboards are empty. There is water but no power (_it ain't a metaphor, Dead Wide, calm down_).

The sun won’t set for hours, so she leaves, quashing her twisting gut as she walks back through the front gate that she had entered carrying him.

She walks for an hour, feeling the sun against her skin and letting her feet guide her.

She finds a town, steals a wallet, then another, and a third. Pulls together the cash and ignores all but one of the cards. Heads to the general store and grabs a cart.

She buys food, far too much of it. Bread and milk and oats and a sharp cheese and fruit and vegetables and eggs and a large block of good quality chocolate and peanut butter and several bottles of wine and one of whisky. Candles, matches and cigarettes. Toothbrush and toiletries. A first aid kit. Several packs of black underwear and tank tops, black jeans and socks and some t-shirts. A denim jacket several sizes too big that she refuses to think on and a thick red bomber that feels soft to the touch. 

She feels like she needs it all, needs to stack and fill that house that she found with what she might need. 

The cashier smiles kindly at her, ignoring the dirty dress and noting the food and wine and candles.

“Looks like a night with a special someone?”

She forces a smile, her former profession providing most of it, and nods without saying a word. She owes nothing further.

The cashier offers to help with bags but she shakes her head, flashing a more genuine smile as she lifts them easily.

She walks the hour home, feeling the coin tucked into the chest of her dress.

The bags are set away. 

Back in the kitchen she unpacks her haul, setting up candles throughout the house. She's not too concerned over the lack of electricity, and when she finds some dry wood near the fireplace she smiles. 

She strips the bedding off the downstairs bed, ignoring the blood flecks and bundling it for washing. 

She's not sure why, but she knows she needs to do this. To set this place up. She knows without knowing why that this is where she should be, that this house has no other owner waiting.

This house has been waiting for her. 

She peels off the dress and adds it to the bundled laundry. A quick search as revealed the house has a few useful items. She finds a cane basket, wooden bucket, old school wooden pegs. A large basin outside for washing, the remnants of clothesline tied to the side of the house. 

She attends to the washing, hanging it in the late afternoon sun.

She gets back in, changing into clean clothing and looking through the kitchen. It has a large island in the middle for preparing food, while the kitchen bench has a large sunken sink in the middle, set so that the washer can look out the window to the path outside and the valley.

She looks through the cupboards and finds a plate, a bowl, a glass, and a single set of cutlery. A large kitchen knife is still sharp, and a wooden chopping board shows signs of wear but is otherwise intact.

She is not surprised that the house has these things.

She pulls the plate together slowly. The growling in her stomach has reached a fever pitch but she moves with slow determination. She slices apples and strawberries, makes a cheese sandwich on simple white bread, snaps half the bar of good quality chocolate and wraps the rest for later.

She sits cross legged on the front porch, watching the sunset behind the tree, and exhales slowly before beginning her first meal in some time. She eats slowly, forcing herself not to wolf it down, all too aware that her stomach is ready to revolt on her. 

Alive or not, it tastes like heaven. The apples are crisp and tart, strawberries sweet, the cheese has a creamy sharpness and the bread is the comforting softness of something with no nutritional value whatsoever. She savours every bite, reverently, focusing on nothing more than the fading warmth of the day and the last on her tongue. She sips water in between, and then nibbles the chocolate as the sun turns the sky to golden pinks and heavenly oranges.

Finally her meal is done and the sun has set, the candles inside providing the only light in the otherwise dark night. 

She pours a healthy glass of Southern Comfort, its cloying sweetness making her nose wrinkle. She lights a cigarette, feeling the nicotine burn its way down her lungs, enjoying the slightly lightheaded feeling she gets now that her body responds to the chemicals. She sips and savours and tries to squash the pricking of memory in her head, behind her eyes, wondering if she'd picked the whisky to torture herself or prove to herself that she didn't need to think about it. 

The exhaustion hits her in a wave and she stands, forgetting the half-finished glass outside as she moves inside, upstairs, to the bedroom. She blows out candles along the way, determined not to set the place on fire and die (again, at all, who knows) and drags the new blanket over her in the bed. 

The mattress is firm and the blanket warm. 

Her body is clean, her stomach is full, the night is quiet.

The moon bathes the room in cool light, watching over the woman on the bed.

Everything for the day has been done. There is nowhere else to escape.

She can't hide now.

Laura McCabe Moon begins to cry.

It starts soft and small, tears slipping over her cheeks that she determinedly refuses to acknowledge, but soon the rising anguish chokes her and she lets out a whimper, and then a sob, and then a cry of agony and loss and anger and frustration.

Soon her thin body is wracked with heaving sobs, with the weight of everything unsaid, with the fear of the month ahead, with the loneliness that is permeating her and has ever since she left New Orleans. She cries until it consumes her world and then falls into a deep sleep, tear tracks drying on her cheeks, the pillow soaked in salt.


	4. Chapter 4

Honestly, some people...showing up without warning and saying _that_. 

Ostara looks at the three women in her drawing room with nothing short of shock.

“But why, old friend?”

The Morrigna, existing in the same space, whole and separate all at once, tilts her/their head.

“You know why.”

Ostara looks out the window over her territory. Where once she had a land filled with greenery, life and growth and fertility, now there was only barren wasteland. She feels a single tear slip down her cheek (prettily, always prettily) and lets out a wistful sigh.

“He sacrificed for me you know. Right there. For a moment I was filled and it was glorious and bright.”

The Morrigan is quiet, lets her continue.

“I knew what he wanted and I gave it. And now…”

The words hang between them for a moment like a broken promise, like a hangman’s knot, like a quiet goodbye after too long spent shouting. The Morrigan finishes the sentence for her in a voice that is not without sympathy, but nor is it bereft of judgement.

“…and now there is no more.”

Ostara turns back to her friend, her voice cracking.

“Fear tastes like ash. I missed the love, the celebration.”

The Morrigan stays seated, shifting from bare chested warrior to an old queen, long hair braided with spikes and her dark eyes gleaming. She nods, understanding.

“The Old Ways are gone, Ostara, and the New Gods are still struggling to understand their place.”

Ostara catches sight of herself in a large mirror, stunning in pink Chanel. She adjusts her golden hair, wipes away a stray tear, gives her thanks for waterproof mascara and her incredible cheekbones. She turns back to the Morrigan.

“So why all of this then? Why Virginia of all places?”

The Morrigan’s smile is enigmatic enough that she feels a second of irritation before letting it pass.

“Because we have a seat to take, a world to protect, and for that we require two things.”

Ostara narrows her eyes. “The spear, I know. Odin is on the warpath in more ways than one now that Gungnir is gone.”

The Morrigan nods. “Nobody has seen it since…”

She leaves the words hanging and Ostara wonders what it means for the moon to lose the sun.

The Morrigan finds one of her three voices. “Regardless, the spear has been locked away by the one who last fed it, behind a door none of us could hope to penetrate.”

"Surely you can access that; isn't it just another faery garden."

The Morrigan shakes her head. "This is something else; the treasure of the sun had only one guardian."

Ostara sighs. “Well then what’s the other thing we need?”

Now the Morrigan is younger, a wicked smile filled with precocious youth, sharp and gleeful.

“A key.”

***

_She dreams._

_She's never really been much of a dreamer, though she thinks that was more in recent years, and subsequently as a result of existing as an undead zombie creature rotting off its own skeleton. Maybe when she was younger she dreamed more. _

_Now, however, she definitely dreams._

_She’s looking up at the house, the dark two story cottage standing proud and strong, neat porch with wood chairs. It’s a sturdy build, looking newer and less worse for wear than it should. She turns and sees that the landscape is also different. Earlier today, in the waking world, the house was surrounded by trees. Now parts of it are clear and planted with crops. People mill about collecting them as a woman with bright red hair under a bonnet watches._

_Laura can’t make out her face from here, but there’s something familiar and foreign about her all at once._

_The scene shifts quickly, same place but another times, and she watches from a distance as the same woman gently places a loaf of bread on the ground and walks back towards the house._

_Laura feels her throat close._

_The woman striding past her is a fractured mirror. The hair is longer, red and curly. The skin is ruddy rather than pale, a warm blush and freckles where the sun has kissed her. Some things are different but her face, her eyes, her smile; _

_Laura is looking at herself._

_A man calls the woman’s name and she turns, moving to take a child from him and walking into the house._

_Another shift, a bowl of milk on the porch._

_And again, the scene changes._

_An elderly woman is speaking to some children under the shade of the tree she recognises, looking the same age, the same height, the same foliage as she saw only this morning. The woman's voice is a musical, fluid thing that makes her heart drop. _

_"Of course, you must never fall asleep by a stream. No, for the alp-luachra might crawl into your mouth and make his home in your belly. For that joint eater will take the good out of your supper so no matter how much you eat after you’ll never be full up, never. Never. Never. Never.”_

_The child bursts into tears and the woman’s face crumples in horror._

_Laura feels a prickling on her neck and turns, sees the surrounding lands shift between the wild trees and overgrowth she sees when awake, and the thriving farm she sees while asleep._

_The scene shifts, the afternoon bleeding away, and suddenly it is night._

_She’s on the porch watching the same elderly woman dozing in a chair, apples waiting to be peeled around her._

_She hears a sound, soft footsteps in the distance, and turns to see a figure rising in the darkness of the night, entering the illuminated circle of the lamps._

_Her throat closes at the sight of him._

_“Essie McGowan?”_

Laura jerks awake with a cry and she tells herself it wasn’t his name.

A spider is crawling over the wrought iron bedframe and she gives herself a moment to feel her heartbeat slow, to control the tears threatening her cheeks.

She shakes her head to clear it and checks the bedside drawer. Inside she finds a pen and writing pad, blank and ready for use, and she wonders why she knew that would be there.

She writes the word down before she forgets it. _Alp-luachra._

She closes her eyes and tries to find her way back to him.

***

Laura stretches, waking slowly as sunlight strokes her face, glinting against her closed eyelids so that she winces against its brightness.

She cannot remember waking up and feeling so rested.

She feels slightly manic, like she has been emptied and then added to, like there is something she needs to do and can't quite remember.

She cleans the house top to bottom, scrubbing and shaking out dust and sweeping with an old broom she's sure wasn't in the cupboard last night but is still not surprised to find. 

A ghost of a dream pricks at her as she looks outside the kitchen window to the tree, a pull that leaves she throat and lungs tight, but it's gone before she can examine it.

She heads to sweep the porch, absent-mindedly grabbing the glass she forgot outside and adding it to a soapy sink. She's so determined that she doesn't look, doesn't think, doesn't process, so she doesn't notice.

The glass is empty. 

***

Outside the gate of the property, unseen by the woman inside, a man in an impeccable suit watches the sun climbing the sky. It’s a beautiful sun, glinting through trees and sending shafts of light over the dark skin of his companion.

“Did she do it?”

He shakes his head. “Hard to say, she’s here but she ain’t quite alive. The rot will chase her down.”

Bilquis watches the woman sweep, watches as she stops to stare at the tree in front of the house, eyes narrowed in confusion. She feels the tugging draw of a heart in need, of something beginning to ripen on the vine and in the vein like olives in the sun.

“She still has a part to play.”

Nancy smiles as he lights a cigarette. “That ain’t what Odin says. He says she’s done, end scene, served her purpose manifold.” He exhales and there is mockery in his voice. "He reckons she’s bolted and faded into nothingness as was her due.”

“Odin says many things.”

Bilquis doesn’t turn to look at him, but he sees the spark of defiance on her otherwise serene face. 

They both watch as the young woman turns away from the tree as if the action pains her, sunlight glinting in her brown curls.

Anansi is quiet for a moment and his voice changes from a mocking twang to something deeper, richer. “This road we find ourselves on…it may not be the one that best one.”

Bilquis turns to him, memories and myth twining around her head like a crown, and he wonders how anyone could do anything other than lay themselves at her feet.

“Maybe it is not the best road, nor the easiest,” her voice is quiet, gentle. “But it is the right one.”

Nancy nods once, sharply, and they watch the house for a moment longer before making their way down the road.

On a tree above them the ravens are watching, cawing, before a crow arrives to chase them away.

***

She dresses in the bedroom, pulling on the red bomber and briefly enjoying the fabric against her skin before becoming aware of the same prickling sensation she had felt yesterday. It does not occur to her to ask why a death goddess is appearing in the centre of her bedroom (_yours now, is it? when exactly did that happen?_), and perhaps that is where she should start, but Laura has rarely done things as she should.

She sighs as she turns.

“You know, this place has a door.”

The Morrigan, looking younger and slightly vicious in tight leather pants and a crown of black feathers, nods at the statement of the obvious.

“Of course.”

Laura doesn’t bother pushing it.

“Look, I need help, OK? I can’t do anything I plan to do while decomposing; you got any suggestions?”

The Morrigan blinks at her insolence.

Laura is reminded again of just how human Sweeney is, was, as the Morrigan looks at her like she speaks Babylonian (_strangely enough not everyone will take to your particular brand of loveliness, Dead Wife. maybe save some manners instead of playing whose the biggest cunt in all the land_). Maybe it's not the wisest thing to order around death goddesses, but somewhere under this false humanity she's experiencing is a growing sense of anger at the way these beings treat the lives around them. 

Her's, in particular.

“Where is your pretty potion, little one?”

Laura shakes her head. “Won’t work, missing an ingredient, any other suggestions?”

The Morrigan nods in understanding. “Ah, so with his body gone you think you cannot complete your draught.”

Laura stares at her for a moment and cannot speak. There are denials on her tongue and recriminations in her throat and a plaintive wailing in her heart that both hurts and wants to agree, yes, yes, yes, it would have worked, only to be squashed quickly.

She has no idea if it would have worked, not really.

Whatever truth she saw while in the company of the Loa she turned to dust the next day, too deeply betrayed to see the hurt on his face, too angry to consider the word knives she threw at him and how they sliced.

_Coward._

Laura swallows. “So…so that’s it then?”

The Morrigan shrugs, a wind picking up around her, ruffling her feathers in the small bedroom. “So it would seem. Unless you can find another source of such blood.”

The sun is carving a line up the far wall of the living room and for a moment the image it creates sharpens into a clear shape, a spear arcing across the wall as if thrown. It doesn’t stay more than a moment before the image is gone, but Laura’s head is throbbing and Baron Samedi’s voice is as intense as ever in her head, reminding her of the one thing she needs.

_Le vrai sangue de l'amour._

_She had scoffed. "I have to find_ that_?"_

She remembers the spreading pool back at Cairo and the hole in his chest and a thought pricks at her.

"How...what was he killed with?"

The Morrigan's eyes are sharp, focused, anticipatory. "A spear."

Laura has no time for games; she sticks to the practical as she had before. “How would I even…I wouldn’t even know where to begin with that.”

The Morrigan’s eyes glitter strangely. “Perhaps you have already begun.”

The Morrigan is there, and then she is not, leaving no trace of having been in the room in the first place.

Laura grabs the slip of paper, pockets it with her coin, and heads into town.

She needs to find a library. 


	5. Chapter 5

Laura looks at the library card pilfered from one of the wallets she took yesterday, and then back up at the building.

Large and grey, a modern build in a small place where little such buildings exist. 

She pulls her shoulders back and heads inside, hesitating in the doorway for only a moment before pushing through. 

She shoots the librarian her loveliest smile (_calm down, woman, you’re asking a question not trying to fuck her_) and is pointed in the general direction of folklore and mythology.

She pulls a haphazard collection together and folds herself onto the floor, blocking the aisle and pouring through books about banshees and birds. A spider crawls over one of her books and she brushes it away.

Alp-luachra and selkies

Aos Sí and Sidhe

She finds one old copy of a book describing the Tuatha Dé Danann (_stop trying to pronounce it, it’s like listening to language being fucking tortured_) from whom the Fae Folk descended (is that how it works? _are you expecting a fucking response here?_). She reads about Lugh and Brigid and Dian Cecht, feels twinges of déjà vu that aren’t hers and she has no way to interpret. She finds a page on the Morrigan and memorises as much as possible (_you really think it’s all here then? in a book by some cunt who never set foot on Celtic soil?_).

_“…shapeshifting goddess of war…encouraging warriors to brave deeds…goddess of sovereignty and guardians…”_

“Well, that’s good to know at least.” She’s not sure who she’s talking to at this point but she adds the book to her pile of take homes.

It takes her a long time to find leprechauns and when she does it’s all about little men in jackets who fix shoes and like practical jokes, granting wishes in exchange for their freedom if captured. There are a range of etchings, small men in jackets counting gold pieces, all the way to the caricature used to highlight negative stereotypes and boost tourism. Often pictured holding a single brogue, ready for mischief.

_She closes her eyes a moment and pictures broad shoulders and height, so much that she had to crane her neck, the feel of a massive body under her, thick arms around her._

_Fighting and snapping and grabbing those fucking brochures at every truck stop to tuck into his pockets that seemed to house far more than they really should have. _

_Eyes filled with guilt, with anger, with rage, at one time with awe, and maybe more than once with something else she doesn’t want to name._

Cheeky looking little men who grant wishes.

Wrong, it’s all wrong.

She slams the book shut, swearing, immediately admonished by the stone-faced librarian. 

This is meant to be helping and she can’t shake the feeling that not one of these books will include a chapter on how to fix your unlife and kill a god and understand your dreams and also maybe possibly bring back the one person who was actually helping you and being useful (_useful? you’d still be in Eagle fucking Point decomposing in a motel carpark if it weren’t for my-_).

She shakes her head sharply and loads a basket with her findings, throws in a few other books on mythology and folklore, and leaves.

The spider on the shelf moves faster, slipping away and disappearing behind another book.

***

Salim blinks.

“…I don’t understand.”

The Jinn doesn’t look at him as he hefts the bag.

“Just take your bag; you leave by bus, now.”

“But why? I want to stay with you.”

The Jinn watches him for a moment and seems to be genuinely considering how the next words should come out of his mouth. He has been trying, since their near miss in Cairo, and Salim stays silent so as to see exactly how honest the Jinn will be with him.

“Because Wednesday told me to keep you away from there.”

Salim stares at the Jinn and the Jinn stares at Salim.

Salim nods, kissing the Jinn and feeling the fierceness of the kiss multiplied and returned with heated fervour, a _soon_ rather than goodbye. 

He’s going to Virginia.

***

Ostara watches the chaos of cleaning going on around her, stepping in to instruct, request, advise, and occasionally correct the various staff attending to her home. She hates to leave it, truly she does, but things are brewing and escalating and given they’ve now got less than a month it seems appropriate to start planning.

She catches sight of the woman and huffs.

“Can you feel it? The pull?”

The Morrigan nods. “We have but a few weeks left at most.”

“And the girl?”

“She will get where she needs to go. It has helped that she found the house.”

“Yes,” Ostara narrows her eyes. “You never did tell me how she found her way there?”

The Morrigan shrugs. “She was called, so she went; we both know this is bigger than that.”

A thought is pricking at Ostara. “That sweet little thing didn’t have more than a skerrick of faith in her when I met her, and misplaced faith at that; how are you so sure about this?”

The Morrigan does not look at her, staring out the window over the still barren earth. She shatters, briefly, into three beings and back again, her back hunched and face lined and none of her usual poise and strength in her limbs. She seems, at that moment, weighed down very heavily, and Ostara can see guilt written on her soul.

Her voice was threefold, tempered with shame and quiet determination.

“Because she believes.”

*** 

At a bar in town, not far from the library, a woman smiles at a man across the room.

Her table companion is amused, adjusting his suit (turquoise and black checkerboard, a silk tie and stunningly slim cut shirt). He watches as the man at the bar smiles shyly back, watches Bilquis catalogue and file away his interest for later picking over.

His Queen is calm, serene even, her tone warm and gentle.

“She won’t find what she needs there.”

“Seems to me she’s looking up our dearly departed.”

She nods. “It clouds more than she can see.”

"You understand we're not the only ones interested in this?" 

"Yes, but too many others see her as a key."

"As opposed to...?"

Her smile is made of secrets and the darkness of surrounding stars. 

"A catalyst."

He wants her then, to taste the relish and pleasure on her tongue. The survivor, the passion and heat of the steppes, the planes, resourceful and driven and glorious. 

“Seems to me like our boy Wednesday’s been playing both sides of the fucking field. Now the Morrigan and the dawn make plans to bring the battle forward?"

He leans towards her, both still watching the man at the bar. "Were I a less secure man, I might suggest it'd be a good time to bring some of your own…talents…to the situation.”

She smiles at him, genuine and suggestive, and he is once again grateful beyond measure for his homeland, his origin, for the opportunity to exist in this space with her. 

She shakes her head. "I cannot walk this path for her. She has to find her way there."

"Well that angry little former zombie ain't exactly one for self-reflection."

“She is hurting too much; she needs to lance the wound before she can heal, drain infection before she can be what is needed."

“And what, pray tell, will let her lance this fuckin’ wound?”

Bilquis is very quiet for a moment, and when she speaks it is with genuine regret.

“Feeling hope...and then losing it.”

***

When she arrives home (_home now, is it?_) she makes herself a coffee, black and too sweet, and brings it outside with her.

Nobody is following her. She knows that. So why does she feel eyes on her neck as if the windows of the house are staring?

Sitting in the shade of the tree in front of the house she continues reading, making notes in the pad she’d found on her bedside that morning. It’s jumbled and messy but she’s trying, interlacing it with what she knows, trying to unpack enough that she can figure out how to get what she needs.

The breeze is light, the air is warm, and the scent of flowers from the valley below wafts over her in snippets and bursts. Her eyes grow heavy, like they’ve forgotten what genuine tiredness feels like, and she struggles to stay awake.

Under the tree she closes her eyes, feeling the mid-afternoon sun over her face, and slips away.

_Her dreams are hazy and strange, snippets of a time that doesn't belong to her, memories to which she has no claim._

_She hurries through the night, taking something special in her hands, ready to leave it somewhere, for...someone._

_“Not just anyone; we have to leave it for him.” _

_She stares at the woman clutching the coin, at the same woman beside her, that fractured mirror she has seen before._

_“Who are you?”_

_“Took me so long to save that one; isn’t it lovely?”_

_She looks at the coin in her hands and it’s plain and fine but nothing like the one that has kept her alive and still keeps her strong._

_“You left this?”_

_“Aye, best I could give, he seemed to like it well enough.”_

_Laura watches as the red headed woman is taken away in chains._

_"Well...they get a bit jealous, don't they? Still, so long as I remembered him, he remembered me."_

_Milk being left in a bowl on a window sill. _

_“Sometimes milk, sometimes more. It’s about the offering of it, isn’t it? Giving what you have to give, with joy."_

_A familiar voice talking to her through a stone wall, a low murmur she can't make out. _

_She's in prison now, and she's frightened. _

_“Oh, I remember him then. Talking about kings and treasure. I told him to come to the new world, he laughed at me for it.”_

_“Who?”_

_“Course, he gave me the idea at least, helped me plead my belly.” _

_There is genuine appreciation in her lilting voice and Laura feels those fractures in the mirror splintering and merging. _

_Now she remembers a ship and her swollen stomach, remembers cliffs and salt water crashing against her cheeks. The woman watches her watching the woman on the boat._

_Things shift and her stomach lurches in the haze of someone else's memories._

_The scene she had dreamed earlier; the woman placing a full loaf of bread on the ground delicately and then walking away._

_“You left those for-“_

_“Well you saw what happened when I forgot about him! My own fault for not paying attention; you can't catch their eye and then expect them not to keep watching."_

_Laura watches the woman beside her smile at a personal memory, her eyes bright and heart full._

_“You think the bad things that happened were because…because of-”_

_"I don't think, lass, I know. But the good...that was him too. Sometimes."_

_On the porch, an elderly woman sleeps halfway through peeling apples. _

_She turns to the darkness as she hears it again, the same voice, the same approach._

_“Essie McGowan?”_

_She tries to cling on, she needs this, needs more answers, needs to see him-_

_Suddenly her dream shifts, there is a ringing that she knows is not being generated by her own brain, and she is home in her grandmother's house. She's alive, can feel it in every shift and spark of her body, patting the fluffy cat on her lap._

_There is humming in the kitchen and she sees Shadow preparing coffee and shooting her that look that used to make her think of the night they met, bringing home a stranger, a thief, the press of bodies and smack of her hand against his cheek. _

_The scene is jarring and it takes her a moment to identify the source of her discomfort. _

_The colours are too bright. _

_There’s too much light._

_The place is too clean, the kitchen too shiny._

_It is as if it's been constructed based on a false briefing; rather than inspiring longing, the scene makes her stomach turn with its faux-domesticity and over saturated colours. It makes her remember nights under him, her mind wandering as he experienced connection and she wondered about the cracks in the drywall. The clawing feeling of trying to be what she needed to._

_“Laura.” He’s trying to catch her attention, all concerned eyes and warm smile and she finds herself so angry she wants to slap him, wants to tell him to save those eyes because she was fucking Robbie while he was in prison and being the worst of friends to Audrey. Wants to tell him about her guilt and self-loathing and the reckless impulse to jump into things without regard for others; not because she lacked empathy, but because surely someone behaving like that was selfish but in control, right? _

_You’re not real._

_This isn’t them, was never them. Them was her trying and failing to find peace and comfort in the mundane, them was her thinking she was taking home a risky adventure and finding a sweet, warm soul who wanted connection and wishing, so much, she could be that. Them was him trying to be what she needed while needing to be himself, her trying to construct what she could while growing more and more disillusioned with the idea of living. Them was her letting him take the fall and then fucking Robbie just to have something to experience._

_The not-Shadow walks over to her and she feels the room shift, feels a tickle on her face like a beetle crawling over her skin._

_“Laura?”_

_The image jolts as if trying to override past her desire for it to stop. She growls and lashes out with her hands._

_“La_ura!”

The voice jerks her awake and she struggles to make out the shape above her, books falling off her chest as she sits upright.

He’s there, pillar of literal light with the sunset behind him, and she struggles with the lack of relief at seeing him, confused and annoyed at the disruption.

“Shadow?”

It’s only been a two days but it feels like a lifetime since they were in the graveyard, her warning him, him telling her not to call him puppy, both of them closing a book.

“What…how did you find me here?”

Shadow gestures to the ravens overhead, and she narrows her eyes.

Before she can ask he’s looking at her in a kind of disbelief.

“You took his body?”

She shrugs, ignoring the mild horror in his voice. How to explain that, when someone has seen you with your chest flapping open, carrying their corpse around was no big deal?

_She remembers the train, Sweeney gleeful and fast as he’d laid out guards, grinning and talking his way through, turning to watch her as she finished off her own assailant._

_“Relax, it’s just a bit of fun.” _

_Remembers the horror on Shadow’s face as she’d stepped on the man’s head, crushing it beneath her foot._

The caw of the ravens makes her cringe and she wants to hide. She looks at Shadow, at his worried eyes and genuine concern, at his obvious frustration.

She aims for curious rather than unwelcoming, isn’t sure she hits the mark. “Why are you here?”

“Why, to pay a visit of course!” the voice at the gate makes her hair stand on end and she turns, suddenly furious.

Wednesday is there, dapper in a cream suit and black scarf, his hat on his cane as he looks around the scenery.

“And to get back something of mine.”

She makes no effort to hide the venom in her voice, spitting poison as she stands. “I have _nothing_ of yours.” It’s the truth, but even if she did, she would gladly fling it into a volcano to piss him off.

Shadow gently redirects her attention to him and Laura is so angry she wants to poke him in the eye.

“Laura, the spear.”

“What fucking spear?”

“Gungnir, the one that…Sweeney sent it to the hoard when…” he can’t finish his sentence and his eyes are filled with genuine remorse and she isn’t stone, she still cares about him deeply, and this reaction is...concerning.

“What…why do you care? What did he do for you?”

She doesn’t know why that is her wording but it’s out there now and she rolls with it.

Shadow looks shifty for a moment, he really is the worst at subterfuge, but she realises he’s more concerned about being overheard.

“Besides being a pain in the ass?” She doesn’t smile back at him, knows that she should but it feels like she’s forgotten how, and Shadow nods as if confirming something for himself. “He…tried to warn me about things. More than once. Tried to get me out.”

She nods, filing that away for later reflection.

“Laura, on that last night, he said…” she waits, her mind supplementing so many things (_I need cash, I fucked your wife, we’re out of whisky, you’re bald, hit me harder_). “He wanted me to know-”

“Can we please hurry this along a little, Shadow? We have places to be.”

She looks at him, casual and comfortable against the gate, and a thought suddenly occurs to her. He's too casual, too comfortable, not moving any closer at all. Neither are his horrible birds, sitting on the tree just outside the gate.

A boundary.

She smiles, a brattish expression that she’s sure Shadow recognises, the little smile she’d enjoyed that night while taunting a certain deceased leprechaun about not being able to get his coin back. 

“You…you can’t come in, can you? You can’t cross the gateway.”

Mr Wednesday does not smile back. The look he shoots her is mild but she sees the briefest flash of fury, and decides not to poke the bear.

“This land is not yours, Laura McCabe Moon.”

She still smiles, far too secure here to let him intimidate her.

“His body isn’t here you know; it’s not like I brought the spear along with me.”

Wednesday doesn’t look surprised at that.

“Perhaps not physically.”

She has no idea what he's talking about but knows if she pushes it he'll see she wants something and then she's completely fucked.

She shrugs. “Whatever.”

“Don’t play dumb with me – you and I both know, Laura-playing-house, that our dearly departed and so very mourned leprechaun left it tucked away in that filthy faery garden of his.”

He plays up a sad face, drawing out the word mourned, and she wants to spit at him as he continues.

“Now, we both know his last few days saw more than a few distractions,” he leers at her and she feels bile in her throat.

“Perhaps along the way he showed you something? Took you somewhere?”

_His yell in her ears, the roar of movement, and his heartbeat thumping against her cheek as they moved through the hoard. _

Shadow is staring at her curiously, suspiciously, and Laura smiles and shakes her head. “Sorry, I was pretty focused on the whole trying to be less dead thing.”

Odin smiles and it's full of thunder and cold places. “Of course.” 

He picks up his hat from the gate, turning as if to move away and then turning back just as suddenly. “I just thought, somewhere between chasing after your former husband and fucking the leprechaun, you might have found something useful?”

If he's trying to surprise her into telling him something he's really going about it the wrong way. The words are designed to sting but she’s starting to find her feet in this dance, and the look she shoots him is filled with innocence, or her closest proxy.

“Nope, those things kept me pretty busy.”

He turns to move to the car and she decides the bear needs poking after all.

“So you really need that spear, huh?”

He turns and says nothing and she smiles at him, squinting against the last of the afternoon sunshine.

Shadow moves to follow Wednesday and she grabs his arm before he steps outside the gate.

“Shadow, please…be careful. This is bigger than both of us, I don’t want you getting hurt.”

Before Shadow can respond Wednesday calls out over his shoulder.

“Oh don’t you worry, Miss McCabe Moon, we will be seeing you again very soon.”

She watches them leave and realises that she knows things, now.

She knows that Wednesday needs the spear, which means she wants to make sure he can’t get it.

She knows that means the spear is dangerous to Wednesday, something he cares about, which means she wants it.

She knows that Sweeney was killed with the spear, and he must have sent it away as a last fuck you.

_And oh she can see him there, see the defiance on his face. She wants to know what he said, what he’d thought, what happened that last day after she called him a coward and left him for good. She wants absolution and she wants to rage and she wants so, so much to destroy the man who lead her down this road, into this place, because of and with and alongside him._

She needs that spear to kill Wednesday.

And if it so happens to be covered in leprechaun blood, well, that’s just a cherry on top.

As they leave she sees ravens in the branch above, picks up a rock, and flings it at them as hard as she can.


	6. Chapter 6

_Tonight she finds him._

_It’s not the front porch of the house with an elderly woman peeling apples, instead it’s a dark room bathed in blue neon light. Drums make the room shift and thrum, a haze of cigarette smoke, and sweat and anticipation in the air._

_A strip club._

_She wanders through, catching glimpses of gods on display, of sensuous grinding against the thrumming rhythm, of endless drinks poured along a long bar._

_She follows a hallway and finds a room, large and empty but for the stage, the woman dancing, and the man sitting in front of it. _

_She stares at him a moment, lets herself drink in this little gift from her brain, comfortably slouched in the chair, long legs sprawled in front of him._

_For a second the chair is not a chair, but a throne. He's not sitting but waiting, a king relaxing and surveying. _

_She blinks and it's just a chair. _

_She gives herself a moment to take in hazel eyes, their colour altered in the neon light, to catalogue big hands and shoulders and the fact that he’s not smiling or even fucking looking at her._

_She feels the pang in her chest at the sight of him and lets herself feel it, lets it tighten her chest until it forces words out of her mouth._

_“Why the fuck are we here?”_

_He doesn’t look away from the girl on the stage, takes a long drag of cigarette and exhales towards the platform._

_"Why does anyone go to places of worship?" _

_Laura looks at the woman._

_She's tall and lean and lovely, intense eyes and brown hair. A dress the colour of gold slips over her shoulders, revealing full breasts and smooth skin. _

_Laura watches him watching her as he takes a long drink. _

_His eyes run over her but it’s her face he rests on, and Laura is curious._

_"Who was she?" _

_He doesn’t answer for a long time and the woman on stage is giving him a smile that speaks of laughter and understanding, longing and sincerity, care._

_"My everything, once.” His words are calm as he breathes smoke over the stage. “Showered her in gold and she gave me a daughter."_

_The woman spins slowly, shifting her hips languidly as the lights begin to flicker. _

“What happened to them?”

_His voice is thoughtful, not mournful. "I heard the banshees' cry and abandoned them. Maybe. Maybe I flew away. Lived in the trees and they watched me eat ants and cry into the night. Or lived happily ever after, who knows?" _

_He laughs and it’s a hollow, lost sound._

_His memory might be a mess but he knows enough, she can tell, to know the last one is not the truth. _

_The lights dim and flicker and when Laura looks back at the stage the woman has changed and she's looking once again at a fractured mirror. First she sees the golden dress disappear, and then it's wild red curls and freckles across ruddy cheeks. _

_Her smile is full of mischief and life, bright and a little biting. _

_“And her? Is she Essie?”_

_His smile is genuine and affectionate as the dancer spins, whipping her hair over her shoulder and shooting him a secretive wink. _

_“Aye, that’s my Essie.”_

_The woman on the stage opens her mouth slowly and a coin appears on her tongue, disappearing again as she closes it and turns. She leans over him, running her hands down his chest, and Laura watches the coin spill from her lips into his open palm as she sits back on her haunches. _

_Before Laura can ask she feels her heart stop. _

_The lights flicker, shift, dim, and brighten. _

_The woman has changed again._

_Thin and small, brown hair in loose waves, completely bare as she moves slowly around a pole. _

_She is shoeless, clothed in nothing more than blue light and an enigmatic smile._

_Laura swallows as the woman turns to her a moment and winks. _

_Another mirror. _

_This one isn’t fractured, this one is her, fully and completely._

_Dead. _

_Not this left of alive shit she has now but dead, sewn together and putrefying. _

_Laura, the one on the stage, runs her hands over her stomach, breasts, her neck and her hair, holding his eyes the whole time. _

_He leans forward, no longer slouching, staring intently as if transfixed, as if trying to drink in every part of her. _

_She is bathed in blue light, the neon turning her skin from grey and dead to a luminescent white, like she's been drenched in the moon, like she's been stripped of any earthly chains. Her autopsy scars look like battle lines, stitching on her shoulder like ritual markings. _

_In this light she swears the scars look blue, like woad smeared over her skin. _

_When she looks back she sees someone in the chair, shirtless and fierce, hair braided with spikes and face marked in woad, eyes full of fire and sitting taller than ever before. She is reminded of Kali-ma, righteous and terrifying with her severed head, sword, and many arms. _

_She can’t look away, can’t move, as the fire-eyed creature turns from the stage towards her, hand wrapped around a spear that he thuds against the floor._

_Then the image is gone and it’s just him there, weight of the world behind his eyes and hunger in his mouth. _

_He takes another swig, watching, and she watches him watching._

_"What does this mean?" _

_"I ain't a dream reader, Dead Wife."_

_“How do I find you?”_

_“I’m right here.”_

_“No, not you here…you? How do I find you?” _

_“Guess that depends.”_

_Laura watches herself crawling towards him, rising up on her knees and shifting forward again like a cat. She coils over him, placing her hands on side of her head, lifting her hair and running her hands down over her collarbones and breasts. She shivers as she watches, feels hands running over her collarbone and breasts._

_“Depends on what?”_

_“Which parts of me you’re looking for.”_

_He's holding out a coin to the woman on stage, and she writhes over to him, hands resting on either arm rest as she opens her mouth. He places the coin on her tongue and she leans down to kiss him, hard._

_Laura feels it against her mouth, heat and saliva. She tastes cigarettes._

_He pulls her to him, twisting her so her back is pressed against his chest and she's kneeling over him. _

_Laura stares, feeling the warmth as if it were against her back, skin breaking into goose bumps where phantom hands are gripping her forearms. _

_The haze, smoke or mist, she cannot say, begins to envelope them. As it closes she sees her head rolling back to rest against his shoulder, rubbing against his cheek with a sigh like a prayer as his hands coming up to wrap around her tightly. _

_Watching them she feels a pull in her abdomen, a shattering urge twisting and twanging in her gut. _

_The last thing she sees before waking is the now empty stage, pole looking like a spear in the blue light. _

She wakes drenched in sweat, reaches trembling hands down between her legs, and cries his name into the pillow as she comes. 

** *****

Days pass slowly, or quickly, she cannot say.

The books are less than useful but the pile seems to grow, cook books and family journals appearing, and she learns of the house and its former inhabitants. She learns about Grandmother Essie and her stories, learns recipes from the Old Country and how to bake the perfect loaf of bread.

She and the house get to know one another.

She finds a pan in the cupboards where there was none, and burns her fingertips when she tries. It’s a burnt mess and she throws it onto the front lawn where it could serve a useful purpose if it killed those ravens.

It's gone the next day, so she supposes something wanted to eat it.

She pours over the library books, searching for anything on fae, on leprechauns, on where to find your former (_punching bag? sucker? guide? booty call? whipping boy? which one is it, love?_)…person’s secret hoard. It all reads hollow, she feels like she’s missing connecting strands to so many questions, and the one moron who could come close to answering is dead. Gone. Done.

In between baking bread from scratch and burning herself and reading and wanting to cry but refusing to any more, she sits under the tree in the yard. Watches clouds. Feels the breeze.

She passes three days this way, dreaming fiercely and harshly in between.

_Sometimes she’s back in the ice cream van, listening to him bitch and gripe with a mouth full of candy bar, saying her lines but twisting and turning._

_Sometimes she’s watching him on the bridge, rolling his eyes and telling her to fuck off when she snaps off the cuffs, and instead of leaping to the train she holds him tightly around the waist, big and warm and real._

_The most recent time she is in a motel, the door kicked open and him there, only instead of gripping her jaw and peering at the coin inside her he kisses her, hard and wild, her arms wrapping around his shoulders to pull herself up closer to him. He tears clothes from them both, refusing to let her go for a second, hands possessive and grip too tight and making her squirm against him as she throbs. _

_When she’s finally naked he sets her on the bed, at his height while standing there, and steps back to take in every inch of her._

_He exhales. “There she is.” _

_His heavy gaze is too much so she steps forward, enjoying the height and kissing him. He’s too gentle at first, hands skimming over her hips and up her back reverently, so she nips sharply at his lip and he gets the hint quickly._

_She can feel his grin against her lips, wolfish as his hands tighten against her. _

_It’s rough, just hard enough to make her flinch and smile, crying out in pleasure under the shitty motel lamps as he enters her. He reaches hand between her legs as he pistons into her, grinning as she picks up the rhythm and pushes herself back against him._

_She gives as good as she gets, documenting the taste of his mouth, his neck, his chest and his cock before he’s pulling her by her hair to lick and bite at her exposed throat. He tastes every inch of her, wringing painful cries of pleasure from her, her hands tangling in his hair to hold him against her as he nips at her thighs and laves her clit and she comes apart against him. When her legs have stopped shaking enough that she can loosen their grip on him he sits up, pulling her into his lap to kiss her, and she tastes herself on his tongue._

_She pushes herself down on him, writhing and fucking herself against him hard, and he’s holding her jaw to watch her as she comes apart again and again before tumbling over the edge himself. _

She wakes with sore breasts, her nipples dark as if bruised, legs shaky and fingerprint contusions against her thighs.

She moves downstairs slowly, every muscle crying out, naked as she makes herself a coffee and acknowledges the deep thrum of warmth and aching heat inside her. She runs a hand over her racing heart and feels the ghosts of seams from her autopsy, as if her skin is beginning to remember that she shouldn't be here, shouldn't be this.

In the wake of what feels like a night of incredible, rough sex _(wasn't though, was it? just another dream_) she feels a growing, gnawing loneliness, and remembers him setting her on the bed and staring. 

She decides a cold shower is needed, taking her coffee with her.

She nearly drops said coffee when she sees the goddess in her bathtub.

She still hasn’t use it yet, disinclined or too afraid, of what she can’t say.

Now it is in use, filled with milky white water, rose petals, the bathroom lit with candles.

Bilquis luxuriates, washing slowly and gently, sipping from a glass of sparkling champagne perched on the rim. Laura is briefly hypnotised by the movement, the gentle swishing of the water, and it takes her a moment to realise she's naked in a room with another naked person.

She decides to roll with it, leaning in the doorway. 

“So…is this a social visit?”

Bilquis holds her gaze with that steady, serene expression, notes of anticipation and amusement underneath the stillness.

“I had thought, perhaps, you may require assistance.”

"And you thought the best way to offer it would be by breaking into my bathroom for a little me time?"

Bilquis stands, an elegant movement, and Laura isn't too proud to cast appreciative eyes over the woman in front of her.

"Our hearts can grow too heavy to hold alone."

"It's not my heart I'm worried about; it's Wednesday's." 

“And yet you are here, mourning someone lost.”

“I don’t mourn him; I need to get into his hoard. I need that spear to kill Wednesday.”

She watches Bilquis slowly rise from the tub, handing her a towel without realising she’d been holding it.

“You believe this will end your pain?”

Laura thinks for a moment, imagines she can feel stitches holding her arm on as she sips her coffee.

“No, not really. But I’m ending anyway, and that man is responsible for all the shit the last few weeks, months…hell _years_ have brought on me. So I figure I’m owed.”

Bilquis' eyes reveal nothing. "You are driven by pain."

"I am driven by vengence."

The smile she receives is so kind, so gentle that she wants to slap the other woman. From the flash in Bilquis' eyes she's not unaware of this urge, and Laura is reminded she is speaking to someone older than even the Old Gods. 

She files away the knowledge that being visited by yet another god, the third in as many days, is probably not a great sign...she wonders what is to come.

Bilquis looks at her with something less like pity and more like genuine care. "So long as you hold that so close to you, it will block what you truly need to see."

Laura wants to ask her, knows she could even get a useful answer, but she can't bring herself. This anger, this pain is letting her keep going, this bitter resentment has been her friend for some time now and has only grown after...

"Do you miss him?"

She feels like the corner of a scab is being pulled and if this continues she will be covered in blood and pus from the infection underneath. She staves off the feeling with eloquence, uncaring of the status of the being in front of her and hoping only to avoid this hurt. 

"Fuck you."

She leaves the bathroom, and when she returns moments later is unsurprised to find the room and the bath empty. 

***

The worst are when she dreams of a knocking at the front door.

_It’s always the same; she wakes up slowly, enjoying the sunshine, becoming aware of the sound of a fist against wood._

_She leaps from the bed and runs downstairs, flings open the door, and-_

Wakes up.

The sun streams through the window and she is awake, truly awake, and it takes her a moment to orient herself to the light breeze, the sound of birds…

…and the knocking at her door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got a bit big so this is actually half of a chapter that has been split. Hoping it holds up pacing wise!


	7. Chapter 7

Salim is tired.

The last few days are weighing on him heavily, driving nearly constantly and fitful rest in between. There has been too little sleep and too much time to think, but the bag beside him is stuffed full, and he has promises to keep.

_He opens to door to find the biggest, drunkest man he’s ever seen, greeting him with a smile, a casual homophobic slur, and an oddly affectionate hand run down his face._

_That night his feet had moved him without his brain quite catching up, finding Sweeney outside on the steps, hand bloodied and eyes much clearer. _

_They talk, and Salim is surprised at the sincerity behind those tired eyes._

_“What are you doing here? What’s Wednesday got on you?”_

_“I am here because the Jinn is here.”_

_He had thought he was trying to explain love to someone who had not felt it; as they speak her realises there is a difference. Never having felt love and having forgotten or given up on feeling it…he’s not sure which would be worse._

_“I'm starting to remember now.”_

_There was something final, calm and focused, and Salim had felt a dread in his stomach unlike anything he had felt before. He had left when Sweeney’s eyes, once again glazed and lost, had taken the big man far away, and spent a few hours wondering why he felt warned and looked out for all at once._

_When Salim had last seen Sweeney he had marvelled at the energy, the confidence in the man he had only known as angry, tense, guilty, or lost. Swaggering into the room and staring down Wednesday, smiling and waxing lyrical about debts repaid by fairy food._

_Alive, tall and strong, present and humming with anticipation._

_And then, dead._

Now, driving through another cold night, Salim finds he misses him.

And he’s going to Virginia.

It’s a drive he has needed three days to get through given his lack of co-pilot and the time is starting to blur a little. He is driving cautiously, having been gripped too tightly by a being with firey eyes and warned to be careful, be careful, be careful with such fervour he had felt seen, again.

_Salim had packed quickly, already prone to travelling light now, and the Jinn had slipped out while he showered, coming back moments later with a package under his arm._

_It was large, heavy. A book with elegant writing scrawled across the front. _

_“Take this, do not open your bag until you are there. Promise me.”_

_Salim nodded and the Jinn stepped closer._

_The ifrit swallowed thickly and Salim waited._ _He was a patient man._

_“Things have…changed. We cannot continue down this path. Something new must be forged.”_

_Salim shook his head. “I do not understand. Where am I going? When will I see you?”_

_The Jinn looked out the window for the moment, sunglasses slipping forward to reveal eyes of fire that had first captured Salim._

_“You said you loved me.”_

_“I did. I do.”_

_The edge of the Jinn’s sunglasses illuminated, as if his eyes had briefly flared, and Salim was reminded again that he was not alone in his feelings here._

_“I have a debt to pay. But…there are those who are fighting for something more.”_

_The Jinn is far away for a moment before nodding to himself as if coming to a decision. _

_“And I think I want more.”_

_Salim waited, again, and the Jinn reached for him, pulling him closer by the wrist. He smelt of the desert at night, cold sand and a crackling fire. _

_“You wanted to know more.”_

_It wasn’t a question but Salim nodded nonetheless. He had found his afterlife. Known him. And now he was known. _

_The Jinn patted the book. “She will need to know more too.”_

Salim continues his drive, and smiles.

***

The Jinn sits quietly in the corner of the diner as Wednesday adds too much sugar to his coffee and Shadow watches him warily. On the far wall a spider crawls, and nobody but the Jinn sees.

Shadow’s voice is tired. “OK, you’re getting your war…but why there?”

Wednesday is quiet for a moment as he stirs his drink. “Because, dear boy, _there_ is where the last vestiges of a strong belief were laid to rest. The ground is ripe and ready.”

“So why didn’t we go there before?”

“Before... Well, I had my spear, and a different plan…and that place did not exist.”

Shadow stares. “What?”

Wednesday shrugs. “Some pockets in time lay dormant, some flare into being, or back into being as the case may be.”

There is so much Wednesday is _not _saying that it seems to weigh down the air, and the Jinn watches as Shadow tries to piece together what he understands, what he knows. Not just any strong belief; strong belief that had brought Mad Sweeney here, to America.

Belief strong enough to cross oceans and ground someone in a new world. The spider has left the far wall and moved behind a sugar shaker on a nearby table.

But there was so much missing.

Shadow shakes his head. “No, it’s more than that…you couldn’t even step over the-“

“I can, I will, I just need the hold to loosen.”

“What hold?”

Wednesday shrugs as if the details don’t really matter and the Jinn can see Shadow is immediately convinced beyond all doubt that they do.

Shadow needs to angle this right, make sure to ask the questions in a way that will confirm what he’s already been told by his unlikely ally in all of this. The Jinn wonders how it went down when Nancy got him on side.

_ “They don’t trust him anymore.”_

_Shadow had stared at Nancy’s serious face, older and more terrible without the mocking glint in his eyes._

_ “I don’t understand; because of Cairo?”_

_Nancy kept his hands in his pockets as he paced, always the story teller._

_“Cairo was one in a long line of situations that have benefitted him; Zorya’s death was another, and some have started to wonder if perhaps he’s benefitting from the two sides being two more than he lets on.”_

_“You think he’s in league with the New Gods?”_

_Nancy smiles at that. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”_

_Before Shadow can answer Nancy stops pacing. “I’ve seen what happens to those who get in Wednesday’s way, so have you. So now our prerogative, young Mr Moon, is to establish just where you want to stand in all of this.”_

_Shadow grits his teeth. “I’ve sworn to him.”_

_Nancy shrugs. “Maybe that speaks to you like it spoke to the big man, all promise-keeping and battles owed. Maybe you want to stand vigil.”_

_Shadow is quiet and Nancy smiles. “Or maybe you’re starting to see that there are bigger pieces at play here, and one puppet master ain’t exactly putting on a show for the benefit of the puppets.” _

_He can’t trust him, he shouldn’t, but Shadow knows what he felt when Yggdrasil shattered and his mind opened up and he knows in his bones that he needs to heed Sweeney’s warnings._

_“So, you want me to…?”_

_In the corner of his eyes Shadow saw the Jinn leading Salim to the front door, bag in hand. _

_“I want you to listen, and wait. And when the time comes…follow the Jinn.”_

Shadow watches Wednesday choose his words carefully.

“There are still a few tiny tendrils of possible belief tethering the ground to…something else.”

“Another god?”

Wednesday rolls his eyes. “An interloper, one being encouraged by other interlopers. But that won’t be a problem for much longer.”

“Why?”

Wednesday’s eyes were sharp. “Belief is a funny little thing. It’s almost genetic; you can be born with it, but developing it later in life is near impossible.”

Shadow’s eyes flick to the Jinn, who shakes his head imperceptibly. _Leave it, let him go._

Wednesday is still speaking. “So, if it’s in its early stages, it wouldn’t take much to have it disappear back into the ether.”

Shadow doesn’t understand but luckily that’s not the point of this little conversation.

The Jinn is relieved; when Anansi had laid out plans the Jinn had been unsure that Shadow would be able to see things this way, but Cairo had changed them all, and Shadow may have been confused, but he wasn’t stupid.

_The Jinn had entered as Nancy had tipped his cap, nodding in confirmation; the book was on its way._

_Shadow was looking introspective and the ifrit watched, crossing his arms and waiting for Shadow to start talking._

_When he spoke, it was quiet and curious. “So…”_

_“So we need questions asked.”_

_“Because…”_

_ “Because he’s playing both sides of the table. Either way, he benefits. And others will crumble.”_

_ “Sweeney said…not to trust him. To keep him away from Laura.”_

_The Jinn nods. “The madman was not always the lost soul you met.”_

_“But what has this got to do with Virginia? Why is she even there?”_

_The Jinn shrugged. “Maybe it called his body back, maybe before the Morrigan interfered it still wanted to claim him. Or maybe she got fucking tired carting his ass around, I don’t care, ask the Queen of Sheba. Can you do this or not?”_

_Shadow had been silent for a long time before responding._

_“Yes. I can.”_

“So, you need someone to retrieve the spear so you can use it to…what? Win a war?”

Wednesday gives him that bland, coy look that often spoke of deep deceit or careful omission.

“Something like that.”

Shadow knows he shouldn’t prod, should be satisfied with the answers he’s got, but he can’t help himself.

“And this someone…why does it have to be her?”

Wednesday gives him nothing. “Well, she’s there.”

The conversation is done, the bill is called for.

The Jinn watches the spider disappear through a window and hides a smile.

***

Nancy waits at the café, sipping an espresso and watching the people around him.

Heads turn as she walks up the street towards him, polished and poised and perfect, dark and lovely in the morning sunlight.

She smiles at him.

“She knows she needs more, even if she won’t admit it to herself.”

He nods. “Well her shit for brains ex and that horny ifrit are on board. Wednesday needs the valley and still can’t get to his spear. Ibis doesn’t know the book is gone; it’s on its way to her.”

“And the Ghede Loa?”

His nod is slower now, he only answers part of her question. “The Baron has confirmed what you already knew; there is a path forward, but he doubts she’s going to figure it out herself. Seemed to think giving over her truth wasn’t something she really wanted to see.”

She watches him, wanting more. “When the time comes…will they fight?”

He shakes his head. “The Loa have a good arrangement in New Orleans; their people keep them well stocked, the tourists indulge enough rituals that their story stays live. The Baron didn’t seem to think his lady consort would be convinced.”

Bilquis does not look fazed, her voice is quiet. “Well, I can be very convincing.”

Anansi remembers the death Loa’s heated eyes and his dark chuckle. “I think that’s what they’re countin’ on.”

***

Salim pulls off the main road and down a track that is more grass than dirt, but when he rounds a clearing he sees it. The house is old but well built, a small two story cottage with a little porch on the front. He pulls the car over, leaving it in a copse of trees, admiring the nature around him, the valley to the side of the property, the smell of salt and woods in the air.

He grabs his bag and takes in the apple trees to the front of the property, one large one on the front lawn.

He steps through the gate and is hit with the strangest sensation of passing through something, feeling tested and weighed and then welcomed, and he lets himself consider it for a moment.

He does not force his feet forward, waits until he feels ready, until he feels the next step is the right one.

He knows she’s here. He exhales; it has been a while since he saw her.

_“So do you love God, or are you in love with God?”_

He thinks of her wide brown eyes and the connection of a lost soul, wandering and confused but determined. Her focus as he had prayed, the peace on her face, as if she could absorb them impact of belief while not truly feeling it herself; wanting to be a part of something without the commitment of being something.

_“You are an unpleasant creature.”_

He thinks of them at House on the Rock, Sweeney pulled along as if by her current, her milky, mocking eyes as she demanded a coin. He wonders what they went through together that created the Sweeney whose final night was spent in glorious introspection or taunting Odin.

There is a knot of wood in the front door that, in the right light, could be a face. Salim gives himself another moment to absorb the space, the early morning sunlight, the weight of the bag in his hand.

He knocks once, twice, three times.

The door opens and there is Laura McCabe Moon.

Buck naked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Viva Mr Nancy and the gloriously talented Orlando Jones.


	8. Chapter 8

“Salim!”

Laura grabs him with enough force that he drops the bag and loses most of the air from his lungs.

She hugs him tight, clinging to him like a child, and he feels a growing warm wetness against his neck and shoulder.

He’s surprised when he wraps arms around her to return the hug; he’s not sure they were ever quite this but Salim can’t bring himself to suggest she reconsider the closeness, not when her body is wracked with silent sobs and she’s gripping him like he might disappear.

Something about the complete abandon in her actions is out of character and thus a bit terrifying, and he finds an answering pull of grief of his own well up, and realises they’re both crying now. He cries for a being he does not fully understand but finds he wishes he could have, for something that may have been a friendship, twisted and a bit odd but nonetheless genuine. He cries for an opportunity barely registered and then missed entirely.

He wonders what her tears are for, and whether she truly knows.

Slowly their tears slow and her wracking sobs settle and he feels her begin to withdraw.

When she pulls away her smile is watery but sincere, and thinks of the woman crowned in flies who watched him pray.

Her voice is a croaking squeak.

“You’re here!”

She goes to hug him again and he holds up his hands, taking a step back.

“You…you must be cold?”

She glances down as if only just registering her nudity, and Salim gives her an awkward smile.

She laughs, pulling him inside, and he settles in the living room while she runs upstairs.

The place is small but well set out, large kitchen to the left, living room with some old chairs still in good condition, a fireplace recently used. She has piles of books on the tables and he wants to know why, how she is here.

Fae and folklore

Norse mythology

African lore and pre-colonial deities

Indigenous spirituality across America

There are notes splayed out over the place, scrawled on pads and random scraps of paper. He finds post-its shoved in what looks like family cook books and some older journals, often with random words like "milk???" and "fairy rings" and "next time use yeast". He finds himself smiling at the last one, scrawled next to what looks like a recipe for basic sourdough.

It all looks like the work of the mildly insane but he thinks perhaps he's not in a position to judge. 

He thinks of the heavy book in his bag and the Jinn and wonders what exactly his part in all of this will become.

When she comes back he’s settled himself on one of the large armchairs.

She’s covered herself now, dressed in black pants and an oversized denim jacket, smiling as she hands Salim a glass of cold water and puts a bowl of fruit on the table. He watches her move around, feeling like this must be one of the few times a semblance of domesticity suits her, and when she sits in the chair next to him he can tell that she’s genuinely pleased he’s here.

And because she is pleased, he finds he is too.

***

Mr World is reaching out of a newspaper and into the diner where Wednesday sits, alone. One moment he is on the page and the next he is there, waiting . 

His whispering, manifold voice is pleased. "You are watching?"

Wednesday nods. "The Morrigan thinks she can unseat us with my spear."

"I had thought your trinket wasss off with the faeries."

Wednesday chuckles. "Indeed. But they've found themselves the dead girl."

"They?" 

"Ostara still hasn't forgiven me for the rabbits. So they've got a zombie onside."

Mr World adjusts his hat. "Ahhh, the one who took the leprechaun to the valley."

"The very same."

"You understand the delicate nature of this timing?"

"Of course. You understand why we have to let it play out?" 

Mr World nods. "Something needs to be done to break the claim on the ground."

"Once the claim is gone we wait out the last of the meathead's coin; the juice'll be done before you can say corpse." 

They sip their drinks and Wednesday is thoughtful. 

"We'll have gungnir, we'll have our battle, and we'll have the last of the Tuatha De for battery power."

"So quick to extinguish your fellow Old Gods."

Odin's eyes narrow. "Overpowered, horny louts. They are kindling on my fire."

"And our lovely lady?" 

"Bilquis still has her ties to your Boy and his tech. She found ground in Cairo, so she's with the Egyptians, and therefore with me."

"She has betrayed me before."

"She's a survivor - she's moved to the 'winning' side. Not her fault she can't see the two are the same."

Mr World nods as New Media hisses past them, a whooping shout of pleasure as she takes control of another news outlet. 

Mr World's smile is a well oiled global entity avoiding responsibility for war crimes. "In 3 weeks we will reap our rewards."

Mr Wednesday adjusts his tie and smiles. 

"Yes. We are right on schedule."

***

Salim is here.

He’s here.

All sad eyes and ugly sweater and smelling mildly like a campfire and here.

She can’t stop tearing up when she sees him, unable to divorce his quiet presence and calm from the intensity of the road trip from hell, the night of the assassination, the wild time at House on the Rock. 

He sips his water, watching it slosh around the glass before looking around the living room, all comfortable chairs and large windows and the mid-morning light streaming through. In the few days she has spent here she's managed to keep it clean, finding herself wanting the space kept in order, though she has no idea what she's been keeping it tidy for.

She wonders if the house knew they'd have a guest.

He gestures to the sunlit room. “It is…nice here.”

She can tell he needs some time to settle himself and so she begins to speak. She talks about finding the house (without explaining why she was slogging a corpse with her, and he thankfully doesn’t ask). She tells him about the Morrigan, about the dreams (_bit of a skint version there, love, didn’t want to tell him all of it?_), about searching for answers.

He’s so quiet and still that she finds herself telling him about everything; the visit from Wednesday, the potion (_skipping parts again; didn’t want to let him know how exactly you got your hands on that?_), the final ingredient, and the spear.

His eyes widen when she mentions the spear and she stills. She waits for him to eat, to drink, and then he starts to talk.

He tells her about Sweeney’s final night.

He talks about drunkenness and Sweeney’s challenge to Wednesday and his warnings and his interlude in Mr Ibis’ office, describing lives lived as Ibis greedily took down every word. He talks about the madness in Sweeney's eyes and then the clearing, the focusing, the way his tired shoulders had started to pull back and he’d seemed to find his direction clearer and truer.

Her eyes narrow when he talks about the book, and her mouth waters at the thought of the knowledge available.

It’s better to think of that than him, drunk out of his mind and then sobering, challenging Wednesday and speaking on debts and still never being given his seat at the table. Salim talks about that meal, Sweeney’s glee at being released from his debt, Shadow guarding the spear in the corner.

He tells her of leaving the room.

She wonders if Sweeney had thought of her, if the cruel words she’d flung at him in a moment of hurt had hit home thoroughly, at whether his final battle had met expectations. She wonders what would have been different if she’d decided to follow him, to confront Wednesday alongside him, to walk those last steps and see him take the final battle as his own.

She wonders if she would have been brave enough to let him shine and knows, full well, that she would not.

She thinks of all the pieces of his story that she’s missing and knows that she won’t be able to pull them together without at least some of his words. Knows that her only chance of ending Wednesday, fucking up his plan for the vengeance and the sheer pleasure of it, is that book. Knows her only opportunity to find a relic that has a miniscule chance of being tacky with blood of the one person who may have felt…something…for her is to get her hands on that information.

She wasn’t brave enough back then, preferred to throw word knives at him rather than admit she was afraid, felt raw and exposed, shaken by their encounter and not yet ready to process what it all might have meant.

Laura thinks of Essie, of her brave and certain eyes and vibrancy, asks herself what that woman would do.

The path is very clear.

“Come on, we’re going to Cairo.”

Salim blinks tired eyes at her and his mouth drops open.

“Why are we going to Cairo?”

“To steal that book.”

The look that crosses Salim’s face is as near to mischief as Laura thinks he’s capable of, and to be honest it’s closer to relieved. He reaches into the bag he has brought and as he draws out his prize her eyes widen.

“Um…about that…”

***

They watch the house. Ostara can feel the growth in the earth beneath her, the heady belief that has soaked into the soil, the life in the woods behind her and the flowers in the valley below.

She is stronger now and knows she could send them all into bloom, full and vibrant, but that is not why they are here.

They are here to start a war.

Or continue a war.

She's not sure. She's not sure about a lot of things.

Her companion seems to read her uncertainty. 

“You know this has to be done.”

Ostara shakes her head.

“This…this seems cruel.”

The Morrigan nods. “It is; but she needs a guide, and I cannot pull memories in this way.”

Ostara is silent and the Morrigan, steps towards her, eyes flashing.

"Do you want him to keep pulling all of our strings like this? To stay under his feet as he builds his army?"

"You know I don't; Media may have found her ways into things but World and New Media are...something else."

"Exactly. Something he's all too happy to use as long as he gets his end game."

Ostara looks to the house. "This is belief being twisted. There is no way back from this, you know that."

The Morrigan nods. "Aye, but there is no other way."

The two women watch the house for a moment. Neither has another answer.

On a flower nearby a spider crawls and creeps and curiously considers. 

***

He’s sent the spear to the hoard.

Laura had suspected but now it's so obvious it makes her want to scream. 

The fucking idiot has sent it to the hoard. 

_“He asked if the Jinn would kill me on Wednesday orders.”_

_She’d laughed at that, sad and cold, and told him more of how she came to be a dead girl in the first place, told him of Sweeney’s role in Wednesday’s plot._

_Salim has filled her in on as much of that night as he can remember. Sweeney’s insistence on the banshee, his difficulty maintaining reality and then slowly coming into himself. He gives her as much as he can and does not hold back, not about Sweeney questioning the Jinn’s commitment, not about love, not about his family, his wife, his kingdom._

_Salim had seemed deeply shaken by the experience._

_“He...he was trying to care about me, I think. Maybe. In his way.”_

Salim hasn’t been able to tell her much about why he’s here, but she knows the Jinn is involved, and when Salim shyly hands her the massive tome he has for her, she feels a strange curling sensation in the pit of her stomach, that warning that there are more hands in the cookie jar than she realises.

She digs deep for the brash, tunnel vision selfishness that has served her so very well (_and fucking poorly_) in the past, and focuses on what she needs. 

Salim, exhausted from his travels and arrival, is passed out on the couch. The sun has long since set, their day spent talking and sharing and then eating in silence, a shared companionship she has never wanted before. She sets her blanket over him, gives herself a moment to feel happy that there is someone else in the house, and then picks up the book.

Coming to America. 

She tucks herself into the armchair, curling into a blanket and staring at the fire for a while. Mr Ibis’ words are scrawled in an elegant, looping script that flickers in the firelight, as though the letters themselves are alive and hoping very much to escape and run rampant.

She reads Ibis’ stories and sees Sweeney’s history, his long, long history, aligning what she reads with myth and legend and thinks she can piece together some semblance of idea around what he said he was versus what he actually was. She stops regularly to re-read a section, or flick back through one of her other books to link some names together.

_A King_

_"I was a King, once."_

She pictures him trying to hotwire a taxi and swearing like a 13 year old losing at a video game.

_A God-King, ancient deity._

She sees him smashing his foot through a park bench in what can only be described as a temper tantrum.

_Something far older, far more powerful, luck and craft and oaths and truth._

She remembers him passed out in front of a statue of St Jude.

_God of the sun. _

Bullshit.

She pulls up her notes from the past few days, Essie’s scribbled warnings about brownies and salt in your pockets and the leprechauns. She pulls up the writings on Lugh, on Buile Shuibhne, on the Fae Folk.

_“Then Mother Church came along and turned us all into saints and trolls and fairies. General Mills did the rest.”_

She finds her scribbles and sections about Lugh and his blood red hair and his spear, impossible to overcome and never missing its mark.

She closes her eyes and all she can see is him in a train carriage stabbing a henchman through the eye and grinning like a fucking lunatic.

This is insane. All of it. The broken, guilty, moody asshole who had held her under the water and then cursed her out when the police came, who had scoffed candy like he was coming down off of something, who had hit on middle aged women partially to piss her off and partially because he was horny...Sweeney was many things but this...this was nonsense.

Something in her brain is clawing at her, a thought like a cat scratching her leg and hooking into her skin, and she doesn't brush it aside for a moment. She thinks of Essie in those dreams and her belief, thinks of him sitting in a chair like a throne in a sleep-scape strip club, eyes suddenly on fire and body covered in woad.

She exhales, reaching into her pocket to pull out the coin, holding it up so that it catches the firelight.

The hoard was real. She was there, she knows that.

Maybe that’s enough?

Feeling foolish, deeply so, she thinks about when he’d wrapped arms around her and that strange pulling, grinding, shifting opening through which they had moved.

The coin is doing that light chiming again and she feels like there’s something she needs to know, something she can use to access that pull.

“Belief. You require belief.”

From the other chair the Morrigan also stares into the fire.

“Belief in what?"

The Morrigan shrugs and Laura rolls her eyes. 

"Look, I was literally there, what more do you want?”

“That is not belief, that is your experience. But the _what_, the _why_…that is where you do not believe.”

Laura does not believe. She’s been ok with that for some time.

She thinks that anyone putting faith in the selfish, cruel deities she has met are stupid, without direction and unable to accept that they were in control of their lives.

At least, so far that’s what she’s told herself.

Except… so far, that hasn't helped her, because now she's a corpse on constantly borrowed time still railing about the injustices that happened in her life (a_nd you fucked the shit out of it, didn’t ya?_) and expecting change without knowing what that means or how she can achieve it. 

"You need to admit you need answers before you can start seeking them."

Salim snores lightly on the couch and the Morrigan glances at him curiously before looking back at Laura.

"You have to remember."

Before she can say a word Laura feels her eyes closing.

When she opens them she's sitting on the hood of a car in front of a field. It's green and flush with white flowers and she wants to run because this was where it started to solidify and she just can't bring herself to watch. 

But she sees them there, the rotting woman and…him.

To the casual observer it's an intimate moment between lovers, a warm embrace surrounded by flowers. She's pressed to his chest and his arms begin to tighten and he lowers his head as if to kiss the top of hers (_but I didn't, OK, was just trying to make sure we got through in one piece so fuck off with that_). 

She remembers those arms and that chest and that moment where a part of her brain had heard "think of your man" and it taken a an extra second to properly connect the dots.

He was talking about Shadow and she'd had to fight to think of him, his face and smile, to push out the image of this huge man and his guilty eyes and rough hands out and keep Shadow in. 

She knew it had cost him to pull her threw, his reticence and need to catch his breath giving the game away. She didn't have many thank yous in her but she'd looked for a way, the cuffs being an easy option for gratitude. 

He'd told her to fuck off and it had felt like something honest and her smile had been genuine. 

Later, when Sweeney had carried her severed torso to the trunk of the car, she'd felt the betrayal like molten steel, charring and cauterising and then hardening around what she'd felt in that field, on that bridge, and hiding it under layers of anger.

Only to have it blown apart later in New Orleans for the lie that it was. 

She buries her head in her hands, as if she can scrub the image of them in that field from her mind. 

"Come on now sweet thing, keep those eyes open." 

Laura opens her eyes to see Ostara, the dawn, the spring, golden and beautiful. Perhaps that's why the smell of flowers and fresh earth and petrichor perfumes the air (_it shouldn't though, should it? ain't like you could smell anything that day anyway, being dead and all. so it's not your memory..._). She files the thought away because right now focusing on the dawn is easier than focusing on that field.

"What...why are you here?" 

Ostara looks terribly, terribly sad for a moment as she watches the man in the field, and Laura wonders what was between them.

_“You all think I’m like you. I’m not like you. You, I’m particularly not like.”_

"To make sure it wasn’t all for nothing, I suppose."

"The fuck is that supposed to mean?" 

"It means you need to see something, and I'm here to help you see it."

"How?"

Ostara's stare is hard. "Because you are still a dead thing, and those eyes of your have more images burnt into them."

"Last time you looked into my eyes I found out who murdered me."

"And you miss him, don't you?"

The question is asked so sweetly Laura want to scream and lash and hurt but Ostara isn't paying attention to her any more. She's looking out to the field where two people are frozen in an embrace and looking very, very tired. 

Ostara quashes whatever is haunting her down and gives Laura a smile so dazzling it hurts to look at.

“Well, honey, tell me everything. How’ve you been?”

Laura stares. “I’m…still dead. Wednesday wants me dead. I want to not be dead.”

Ostara tilts her head. “So…nothing’s changed then.”

They watch each other for a moment. Nothing has changed.

And everything.

Laura looks back out to the field and jumps to see Sweeney right next to her. The memory has been wound back and she can see herself marching forlornly into the field as he leans on the car and has a drink.

"Careful honey, we have to watch closely. Blink and you'll miss it."

She moves next to him, knowing without knowing that he can’t see or hear her, and watches him watching her pick her morose way through the field and lie down. He looks tired and resigned, his eyes following her, and she wants to know what is going through his head.

Laura watches as he gets up and follows, as he offers her past self a drink and stands for a moment.

She can’t hear what they’re saying but she remembers her self-indulgent melancholy and his genuine concern as he’d looked out at the field in front of them. 

Suddenly things shift and she's standing right there, watching them both, and when she glances at Ostara next to her, she shrugs.

"Front row seats for us."

_"So, you're just gonna lie there then?"_

_"I think the worms are calling." _She shakes her head. So overdramatic.

_"This is bollocks."_

_"What?"_

_“I thought we were going to save somebody.”_

She wonders if he meant Shadow, or someone else. She wonders why he wanted to save anybody. She thinks of guardians and books full of stories. 

_"We can't just give up because the fucking road ends." _

She watches him watch her then light a cigarette, resigned for a moment before giving in to something and she realises that he'd been just as lost as her. 

_"What if I told you I had a short cut?"_

_"I'd say you were a piece of shit for holding out on me?"_

_"Is that how you ask for a favour?"_

_"What's your shortcut, please?"_

She stifles a smile at his teasing, at her brattish responses.

_"It's a place where I can hide things."_

"Understatement of the century." Laura ignores Ostara's snark for a moment, too focused on him. 

_"Be a tight squeeze getting through there with your manky hide but I can try."_

He looks down at her and now, watching him without the lens of time sensitivity and perhaps something more, she can see he's asking something bigger than she realised.

_"If it's that important to you."_

_"Ok. Yes. It is. For Shadow."_

_He tilts his head with a look of rueful amusement. "Alright then."_

The air begins to shift. 

_"Close your eyes."_

_"Why?"_ She nearly laughs at herself, so distrustful.

_"Think about your man."_

_"How does this work exactly?"_

_"We're going through the hoard."_

Laura watches him pull her close and a part of her aches and she turns away.

"No darling, no blinking. You have to remember the feeling. You have to see."

Ostara's voice is firm to the point of being harsh but Laura knows she's right. 

She looks.

Around them the air is shifting and the ground is quaking and she can feel it, that dragging pull, as if something is being opened that is usually kept closed, as if the atoms of the world are being asked to accommodate something outside of their usual remit, and she feels that drag intensify and build and then the brightness like a golden flash and there...

...she feels it.

She opens her eyes to find herself back in the house.

Salim is still asleep on the couch and the Morrigan is gone and Laura feels the hoard.

She holds the feeling close to her, clutching the coin in her right hand and reaching out carefully with her left and chasing it, seeking that dragging pull that her blood can connect to, as if the sparkling of the coin in her veins is singing out to something in the world. She feels something around her hand shift and open and then a vaccum and she reaches inside and then...

There, resting in her left hand, are 3 shiny coins. 

***

At the exact same moment, in a bar in New Orleans, a woman is placing a tray of drinks on a table.

She stops as if shocked by a bolt of electricity, eyes going distant and ancient, still and quiet long enough that it catches the eye of her consort. She straightens slowly, unable to breathe. 

When he moves to her side with concern on his face she swallows, and then a serene voice reaches them through the din of the bar.

"A glass of champagne, please."

The Loa turn as one and Bilquis smiles at them. 

***

Laura falls asleep quickly, exhausted by the effort of pulling those coins loose and then sending them back (she'd only managed to move one back through).

The next morning, Salim helps Laura to bake a loaf of bread. He is patient, making suggestions without pricking her innate sense of pride enough that she abandons the task, and soon the house smells amazing.

The bread comes out perfect and something golden and warm builds in Laura's chest. 

It feels an awful lot like hope. 

***

In a beautiful hotel restaurant near the house where they're baking bread, Ostara tries to stay calm as she hisses to the Morrigan.

"We cannot keep this from her!

"We must. How else can we-"

“You didn’t see that girl in there; she could barely even look at him!"

She closes her eyes against the image, swallowing thickly. She is ancient, but not without her sentiment, and something here is not right. 

"She’s clinging to this like it’ll give her everything, like she’ll be able to bring herself back and also…”

“Say it.” The Morrigan is staring straight ahead, sipping at a glass of wine so dark it looks like blood.

“She wants him. Back, here, now.”

“We cannot give mortals what they want. You know that.”

“But what about his memory? He was one of you, once.”

The Morrigan's eyes narrow. 

“You would _dare_ try to remind me of his memory?”

Ostara is quiet for a moment. “Does Brigid know about this?”

“Do not threaten me.” She sighs, backing away from the anger quickly and avoiding the question.

“I understand, Ostara. But without hope she will not open to belief, and the sun’s treasure will remain silent, and how can we hope to win against them otherwise?”

Ostara feels the tears pricking at her eyes. “But to lie to her like this, to nourish such a bloom of hope. It’s cruel.”

The Morrigan’s eyes are not unkind, but they are unmoved.

“Wednesday and the New Gods are seeking our destruction. One mortal’s foolishness cannot derail us.”

The Morrigan is gone and Ostara waits for a moment before pulling out a phone in a bejewelled pink case and dialling a number. As it rings she scratches behind the ears of a bunny that has appeared at her feet.

She speaks quickly into the phone. “We're trading in lies, creating hope for harvest. Tell me what you need.”

She listens and then hangs up. 

On the other end of the line Anansi smiles to himself a moment, dialling another number. When he hears her voice his smile grows, and he speaks to the ifrit next to him and the goddess on the phone at the same time. 

"We are right on schedule."


	9. Chapter 9

It is a good day.

They make bread and she shows him the coins, and then spends the next hour explaining why she’s so excited. By the time she’s finished he’s smiling, unsure but game, and they spend the better part of the day outside as she tries again and again to pull something from the hoard.

She has no success, unable to access that dragging tugging vacuum, but with the coin in her boot and the sunshine on their faces she refuses to let it dim the little well of hope she's feeling. 

Stubbornness, perhaps, but a hopeful kind of stubbornness nonetheless. 

She can’t stop smiling.

Between attempts they bake more bread and drizzle it with honey and eat it while wandering in the flowers of the valley near the house. Laura swears there are more than there were, blooming and glorious, and they follow the paths around trees and to the edge of the forest.

Laura watches Salim pray through the day, the moments sometime becoming a point in time to stop and still, and she feels a part of herself being nourished, a part she had no idea was going hungry.

They pour over her notes, reading every book she has hauled back, and several that the house gave her, and throughout the day they piece together this strange puzzle they’re calling Sweeney, engrossed enough in the analysis to ignore the occasional pang that occurs when they think of the person.

As the sun sets they head back to the house, where Salim shows her how to make mushaltat stuffed with spinach from the garden and the last of her cheese. While it heats she makes them warm milk with the last of her chocolate stirred in so it melts and blends into a rich hot chocolate. They eat on the porch and as they sip their drinks he tells her about love and the Jinn and the warmth of his smile stings her eyes.

The night has begun to cool so they head inside, forgetting plates of mushaltat and half drunk cups of hot chocolate for the morning. She lights the fire, both of them curled in arm chairs and surrounded by books and notes. They talk only occasionally now, a randomly shared fact, or something mildly funny. At one point she shows him a crude passage describing ancient Celtic sex rituals according to Roman invaders, and she is oddly delighted by the blushing laugh it elicits.

She’s happy and full and even if her skin has begun to dry slightly, even if she can feel the seam in her arm slowly shift from smooth skin to something rougher, she still feels buoyed.

She can do this.

She can find this spear.

She can get the blood she needs to come back to life.

She can push the spear through Wednesday’s oily heart.

And if she can do all that …she doesn’t let herself finish the thought, but it’s there. Brilliant and bright and unavoidable. Unspoken and yet somehow permeating everything she’s doing.

It has been a good day, and she feels happy.

***

“Brigette, stop pacing.”

She shakes her head to clear the sea spray, salt and cliffs from her vision but they cling stubbornly, a warning. 

“She can’t do this.”

“Chere, this ain’t your fight; we got our own people to worry about.”

She turns to him, striding forward. “Don’t you _dare_ suggest I would leave our people without-“

He meets her in the middle, not backing down. “Don’t turn that heat on me, woman. You know I wasn't sayin' that. But I ain’t losing you over this nonsense.”

He's gripping her hands to his chest and she breathes in deeply, tabacco and rum and the graveyard all around him, reassuring and warm. 

Home.

“If he sent it to the hoard then it’s there for a reason, you know that. Nobody should be going for it, no matter how much a fool they are.”

“Oui, but can you blame her for trying?”

Brigette holds her head a moment as the memory of grief, the weight of something long lost and found and lost again, makes her vision swim. Gone, gone, gone…another mark in the ledger she left behind so long ago.

She blinks it back and turns to her husband.

“You heard the queen; the girl is in Virginia.”

“Yeah, so?”

The Baron doesn’t give anything away but she knows he is open, picking through every word, and she pushes.

“Those are _his_ lands, Samedi. Last ones he had, last point of connection. What d’you think will happen if the Allfather can cross the threshold?”

The Baron is silent for a moment but she can see him working through it, see the dominoes knocking down the line.

"You think he’ll end it…the whole line?" 

She nods, tears pricking at her eyes, and she shakes his head.

“But he can’t, not while that belief holds firm.”

“And what does it take to kill belief?”

The stare at one another a moment as Bilquis’ words come to them.

_“There are those who might seek to do right by taking the wrong path, and those who will benefit from it.”_

Samedi’s eyes narrow. “The Morrigan…she’s been able to get this far, get the girl there and apparently plucking around in the hoard…and that ain’t dumb luck.”

Brigette nods and they both see the betrayal writ large.

“Grimnir knows.”

“Grimnir knows.”

Samedi sighs. “So…Virginia.?”

It’s a question with many other questions behind it, and she sees him reading her, making sure he knows exactly where her loyalties lie. She raises an eyebrow at him because he’s a fool, and his answering smile warms her chest.

“Virginia.” 

***

Salim has retired to bed, and Laura is not surprised to look up from her page and find the Morrigan standing by the fire, watching it with dark eyes.

Laura shares the day’s sense of purpose, as if saying it out loud will make it so.

“I can do this.”

The Morrigan smiles her sad, cold smile and watches Laura try to pull the coins back again.

It doesn’t work, but she refuses to think it won’t happen. The Morrigan fades and that night Laura dreams.

_He’s in that fucking chair again, though this time the stage is empty, and when she enters he turns to her as if she’s the entertainment._

_Maybe she is._

_Again she sees fire and strength and a greatness behind him, wild eyes and a spear taller than her, and then it’s gone and he’s scowling._

_“Why are you here, Dead Wife?”_

_The question is genuine; he’s pissed off, she can see it, but beneath it there’s worry._

_She doesn’t want worry, not right now. Not when she’s missed his looming presence and feels a heat pooling in her belly at the sight of him. Not when she sees him flicker between blue streaked madness and a man drinking whisky bathed in neon light._

_She lets her steps slow, makes sure he watches her as she moves._

_She sits on the edge of the stage, putting one foot up on his seat and leaning forward to take the drink from his hands._

_He lets her._

_He’d always let her._

_She feels warm, slow and languid._

_“Maybe I want to be here.”_

_He grabs her wrist so quickly she nearly chokes on the drink, his voice an angry hiss, and she’s more than a little pissed that her brain can’t just give her a decent fuck on an empty stage._

_“Here ain’t _here_, Dead Wife. You and I both know that.”_

_She studies him, memorises the face she has memorised before, and sees something trying desperately to reach her. Fire dances behind his eyes and she has the strangest sensation of something trying to grab at her and ground her._

_“Then why are you here?”_

_He sits back and suddenly the chair isn’t a chair, the man isn’t a man. Instead loom the figure she saw before, clutching a great spear, golden braided crown around his neck. It’s another fractured mirror, or something enhanced, like drinking pure cordial when she’s used to sipping it watered down; something not meant for general consumption._

_She swallows against the rising thrill and fear she feels when those eyes hold her, and blinks until it disappears._

_It’s just him again, eyes focused and heated but not on fire any longer._

_“It’s as good a place as any.”_

_She shifts off the stage and places her knees on either side of him, knowing he’ll lean back to accommodate her, knowing he won’t stop her from crawling into his lap. He keeps his hands on the arm rests, fingers tightening around them as if to make sure they don’t move. _

_She repeats herself, that heat in her belly turning her voice to a deep rasp. _

_“Maybe I want to be here.”_

_He scoffs as his fingers tighten as if of their own volition. “Since when would you know what you wanted?”_

_She smiles because she sees him, drapes her arms around his neck._

_“I want to be here…with you.”_

_He studies her for a moment and leans forward to place his hands on her thighs, pulling her tighter against him so her face is inches from his._

_“You’re assuming an awful lot there, don’t you think, Dead Wife?”_

_The pull in her belly is seconded by a pull in her chest, and she pushes away the prickling in her eyes, unwilling to have this compromised by the enormity of her grief. _

_“Maybe I’m trying to find you.”_

_“I ain’t lost, love. You and I both know I’m not here, not really.”_

_She wants to argue but that heat in her belly is twisting and she shifts against him, feeling him hard and wanting, seeing his pupils dilate and his mouth tip open. _

_“Then maybe I’m looking for buried treasure.”_

_“Some treasures need to stay buried.”_

_She kisses him as if she’s alive, as if he’s still here, as if she can convince the universe to let her shift this into reality. His arms wrap around her back, hands in her hair, hungry and wild and for a moment she feels his heart beating so close it could be her own. She grinds against him, moans against his mouth._

_He pulls back, a grin on his face as her mouth stays open and her breath comes out in heavy pants._

_“Who told you to go looking?”_

_She shrugs and her mouth supplies the words without her brain knowing why. “A little black crow.”_

_She moves to place another kiss on his lips, hungry for the feel of him, even in a dream._

_Before she can his eyes suddenly narrow and focus and then he’s standing and bringing her with him, his voice rough with sudden anger._

_“Who are you trusting?”_

_She can’t respond and his eyes are full of worry and fury and fear and fire. He’s gripping her forearms and she’s suspended off the ground and there’s a terrible rage to his every word._

_“WHO ARE YOU FUCKING TRUSTING?”_

_The dream shifts._

_She’s back in her grandmother’s home. Her dress is clean and her hair is shiny and there are fresh flowers on the table where she’s sitting. There are glasses of orange juice, plates of pancakes so flawless they may as well be painted, and across the table Shadow gives her a beautific smile._

_And the scene freezes. _

_Except for the flies. _

_They buzz, and pick, and land, and swarm._

_The sound makes her ill as they congregate around her; she feels them resting on her head like a crown, feels her body loosening and rotting away, seeing them landing in the sticky maple syrup and stay stuck against the sugar._

_She can’t move as more and more of them arrive, until the entire place is covered, until the table and the flowers and Shadow and her own hands disappear._

_Everything is gone and all she can see are Wednesday’s eyes are on her, watching, seeing, waiting._

_“Time is running out, my dear.”_

She wakes up with a start and feels the flies still crawling over her decaying skin, feels her slowing, erratic heart beating awkwardly as her lungs pull in unneeded air.

She runs down the stairs and into the night, the cold air prickling her skin, the cold itching at her increasingly papery flesh. She can’t let them in the house, can’t let them in her space, can't let that filth spread any further.

She slumps, crying, on the front steps and knocks an empty cup and bowl to the ground.

When Salim finds her he’s patient and practical, picking up their empty dishes with a confused expression before taking them inside. He returns and sits next to her and when she finishes crying she inhales.

“I’m getting the hoard today.”

She says it out loud so the universe can hear her, so the ravens in the far away trees know she is coming for them.

She can do this.

She has to.

***

Tech Boy leans against the desk.

His hair is perfect. His joule always charged.

He has built and overlayed and modified and enhanced and augmented and been worshipped endlessly, a pursuit unto itself.

He is above the network, in the network; he built the fucking network.

And yet...

He grinds his teeth as New Media pulls line after line of code out like it's candy, wrapping them around herself and sending herself over everything. It's cloying and all consuming and not progressive; it's regressive in its worship, winding back and down and through.

He sucks his teeth and holds his tongue, all too aware of what will happen if he blinks wrong. Fucking facial recongition.

Someone made contact today, someone in an overly loud suit with an overly sharp smile and an overly clear eye for the story. 

Someone who was convincing.

Tech Boy watches Mr World move his pieces around in his mind, and wonders what happens when someone has a monopoly on faith.

***

The next morning her dream has taken hope and pushed it harder, and now she feels the desperation prickling over her.

She can do this.

She looks at her still empty hand with a growl of frustration.

Salim is shaking his head.

"You fight."

She narrows her eyes at him, having to remind herself that he's not Sweeney, that her vitriol won't be a challenge but an unkindness, and she tries to stay patient _(very fuckin' sweet of_ _you_). 

"What do you mean?" 

He's stroking the prayer mat absently and she wonders if he's drawing strength from the contact, if that's what belief can do for you. 

“You cannot have faith on command…it’s…it’s not a guarantee. It’s a choice.”

She runs her fingers through her hair with a frustrated sigh. 

"I know, I get that. But honestly this just keeps feeling like playing pretend."

Salim is thoughtful, looking out as the sun rises ahead of them, and when he looks back at her she's surprised, again, by the depths of emotion he's willing to share. It’s not that he wears his heart on his sleeve; it’s that his everything is ripped open and bare and he doesn’t bother trying to hide or cover any of it. It’s not pride, or display; he lives his truth fully, completely.

Refuses to be anything but him.

"What is so wrong with that?" 

Vulnerability isn't a weakness on him, it's his ability to give himself over with such joy and purity that to not rise to his faith would be a failure.

“What’s wrong with pretending to believe in something? Um…everything?”

“But you said playing pretend; what is wrong with playing? You liked it when you were little, yes?”

She is quiet and he continues.

“When I was young, I knew that there was magic. I knew it. Then, for a long time, I didn’t really know. Growing up…it does that.”

She is transfixed in the face of his honesty.

“And now?”

He smiles his sad, quiet smile. “Now…I know my God loves me, I know the Jinn is the pathway. I know and so I see evidence of it everywhere. When you look for magic, you find it.”

He stops, looks into the distance for a moment, and she is filled the an awareness that there is a lifetime lived here completely distant from her own. She has rarely given that much thought but now she can see it written on him like tattoos; fear and escape and finding hope.

He looks back to her. “So...what do you know?" 

She doesn’t know much of anything.

She knows she was killed by a god to ensure her husband was ripe and ready.

She knows she was just a puzzle piece in a bigger picture and is making a nuisance of herself by hanging around.

She knows she has fucked up…but that she had a right to, because that life, pathetic or pointless as it may have seemed, was hers.

She doesn’t think she knows much more about herself. She can’t find that evidence of love or vein of truth he offers so openly.

She runs a hand over an old journal, strokes the spine of a cook book. Thinks of a woman with wild red hair and a ready smile and belief.

She knows Essie had sought to change things by making her offerings (_that's what belief is, love, action to effect change without a guarantee_). Essie had belief and she’d had a good life here, in this place, eventually. She had suffered and rather than complaining she had sought to change her luck.

And so her luck had changed.

She knows him. Maybe. Broken and splintered but she can see the pieces, even if they don't all fit together. 

Laura thinks of every time she’d seen him pull a car jack, a hat, a flask from somewhere his jacket couldn’t possibly fit.

_So hurt when she said she didn't believe in luck, as if the comment had physically harmed him, though perhaps it was just his feelings._

She thinks about every time he’d produced a coin or sent some randomly collected knick-knack away, always so easy and comfortable that it was a part of him, opening and closing and bringing from one place to another. 

She thinks about him gripping her body against his, roaring and pulling them through, finding herself in a different place.

Those things were insane, ridiculous, shouldn’t have occurred.

But they did; they were real. She believes because she actually got to see them (_that's not belief though, is it?_). Hell, she has pulled coins from that place, has latched on to the feeling of being dragged in and the energy in her blood has let her pull the door open.

It's not enough, she can feel that, and so she opens herself up a crack to try to let something, _anything_ in.

If those things were real (_come on, you're nearly fucking there, don't be a coward_) then maybe other things could be too (_don't be weak about it_).

The coin is in her hand, its magic is in her blood, she's not Fae but this is as close as she'll get (_well, you can’t say you’ve never had some Fae in you at least_). 

He would want her to be able to get to it, she knows that much.

She believes that much.

She believes.

And then, suddenly, she feels it again.

A pull, a shift in the air, as if something is opening and becoming available to her. This isn’t like pulling coins, which felt like a gentle tugging on her fingers.

It’s deeply uncomfortable, like sticking her hand in a vacuum, like the space wants to consume her and keep her there, and she wonders if perhaps during their adventure in chasing trains he’d been less focused on squeezing her through the hoard so much as making sure she came back out the other side.

She tries to remember the spear from her dream and then, suddenly, there it is. 

She looks down at the object in her hand; it’s enormous, thick and ancient. It feels warm and welcoming in her hand, the coin in her pocket letting her heft it with ease, and there’s something familiar and reassuring about the weight of it.

Her blood thrums and she finds herself smiling as she grasps the shaft of a weapon taller than her, but her smile disappears when she examines the blade.

It's old, excellent in condition but a simple design, and...it is completely clean. 

No blood at all. Her heart sinks.

Salim is staring is shock and then frowns. 

"That...that is not the spear I saw."

"Um...what?"

“No…NO.”

Her head snaps up at the panicked tone in the Morrigan’s voice, coming as if from three throats all at once. Salim is staring in shock at the goddess who has appeared in front of them, the triple figure swaying into three and back to one, hands up and eyes wide in the early morning sunrise.

“Not…not that one. You must return it, now!”

Laura releases the spear without thinking, the hoard sucking it back greedily, and she's left with that feeling of something ancient and magical and oh so fucking wicked howling inside her blood, and wonders what the Morrigan isn't telling her. 

The dark haired goddess calms herself, her tone educational, and Laura feels a strange sort of curiosity…or suspicion.

“You need Gungir; the spear with which he was slain, Odin's spear.”

"And that was..."

The Morrigan's eyes are cloudy and wistful for a moment.

"That belonged to something else."

“Are you fucking kidding me? It’s not like this shit comes with a fucking catalogue.” Laura feels her impatience rising. "I don't need this shit - I need Odin's spear to kill him and to live long enough to do that, I need the blood."

The Morrigan nods but there is something off in her expression, something a little wild, barely held together. 

“You need something to connect you to Gungnir.”

“You want me connected to something I’ve never seen?”

Laura wants to scream but the Morrigan is looking at Salim and a smiling is slowly stretching across the face she wears today.

“You have not seen…”

It’s not strictly a pleasant smile, but it’s there, and Laura steps in front of Salim, who is looking more than a little uncomfortable.

“…but he has.”

***

Ostara sits across from the Jinn, toying with a glass of champagne, stroking the strawberry on the edge of the glass.

“The field is fertile, the ground is ready. Why did Nancy send you?”

“Because Nancy needed _him_.”

Ostara’s eyes narrow.

“You put him in danger…you know that this is a risk?”

The Jinn nods, Nancy’s words in his head and a drink in his hands.

“Salim is no fool; he will remember.”

“And the girl?”

The Jinn shrugs. “She will want to forget.”

They finish their drinks silently and leave without saying goodbye. Later, much later, Ostara walks across the small valley below the house. She sends power to every bud, every flower, coaxing and encouraging and demanding blooms.

The valley yields a riot of colour and life, and she smiles sadly. 

A fitting send off. 


	10. Chapter 10

Shadow can feel something creeping over his skin.

It's started slowly at first but has been growing steadily since they left Virginia. Something he needs to know, somewhere he needs to be, someone he needs to help.

No answers as to what, where, who…

But that something is growing and shifting and he feels like it’s choking him.

“Hah! And there she goes!”

The glee in Wednesday’s tone makes him feel sick and he pulls the dots together quickly. He's remembering a merry go round and the House on the Rock and Wednesday's winding, storyteller voice...

_"So over the centuries people in other countries felt calls to places of power. They knew there was an energy there, a focus point, a channel, a window to the imminent. And they built churches, cathedrals, or they'd erect a stone circle you get the idea..."_

When Shadow turns Wednesday is smiling like Shadow's finally read a book he's been waiting to talk about with someone.

"Last vestiges of strong belief, you said…something that held you from entering. Is that place…is it a point of power?"

Wednesday taps his nose.

""Dormant power, but power nonetheless...and not dormant for long. I couldn't say it in front of our fire-eyed friend; the Jinn may obey me but he's been straying a little too far up someone else's beaten path if you know what I mean."

Shadow doesn't.

"And it's Sweeney's power?"

Wednesday watches Shadow a moment and makes a decision, speaking as if the words leave a bad taste in his mouth. "Before he was Mad Sweeney, he was...more. They were more."

"They?"

Wednesday ignores him. "So, I need my spear back before the power in that place reaches a peak."

"When-"

"The solstice. Two weeks. So I don't have much time, but that’s OK, because your dearly not-so-departed will get it for me."

"Why would Laura do that?"

"Because she will have nothing left.”

It is said without malice which somehow makes it all the more malicious.

A throw away.

“So, you think she’ll give you back the spear and-“

“Gungnir is just one piece in this puzzle. It’s not really about the puzzle at all…it’s about power."

"Power?"

"You saw Ostara after the sacrifices?"

Shadow remembers the strength, the glow, her power spilling out over the land in a dizzying wave of energy. He felt it in his bones, the pull of life, like a tide drawing away from the beach and then rolling back in a heady, rushing wave all around them.

It was nothing short of stunning, incredible, beautiful. He had felt it in his soul, something joyful and wild and bright.

And then she had taken back the spring, and he had been filled with fear.

Wednesday is watching him like a hawk.

"That was a sacrifice of goons...now imagine sacrificing a whole pantheon."

Shadow has no idea what he means but Wednesday doesn't seem to care, his words coming out faster, intense and half addressed to nobody.

"Ending a Celtic line - bunch of Fae lunatics - on ground drenched in old belief...can you imagine, Shadow?"

His smile is far away and very pleased with itself and Shadow's skin crawls but he forces a nod.

Later, as he packs Wednesday’s bag, he sees another man walking down the hallway. He turns to Shadow’s open room and doesn’t speak a word, but Shadow hears a voice nonetheless; something mocking and winding and downright instructional.

_"And when the time comes...follow the Jinn."_

He leaves the bag on the bed and turns, walking behind the other man and out of the building entirely.

_***_

**20 minutes earlier**

Laura is running out of time.

As of today it has been two weeks since she arrived at this place with pain in her heart and Mad Sweeney’s corpse on her shoulders.

As the Morrigan smiles at Salim, Laura grits her teeth.

_"...but he has."_

“What, what do you want?”

The Morrigan shrugs. “A memory, willingly given.”

Salim watches her and Laura can tell he’s weighing up his options, and the Morrigan breaks the silence.

“I cannot coax memories but you can yeild one. The girl needs to know what the spear looks like; you have seen it.”

“So have you.”

“I cannot hand over a god’s memory to a mortal.”

Salim locks eyes with Laura but addresses the Morrigan. “What are the risks here?”

“Death. But more likely just pain.”

Laura shakes her head. “No, no that’s not right…we can’t risk him just so I can see this thing. Can’t you get a fucking picture or something?”

“You are trying to access the sun’s treasure; you cannot connect to a picture, you need a memory.”

Laura thinks of her dream and the other spear and swallows, pushing the thought away. She turns to Salim. She cannot, will not ask this of him.

“You could leave, right now. I would understand. You’d remember my hot chocolate and all the flowers.”

He smiles his sad smile and shakes his head.

“No…you know we can’t do that.”

Laura feels a tear pushing out as something inevitable and gut wrenchingly true settles over them both. She knows he was sent here, knows he didn’t just decide to show up with the book unannounced, knows they are both part of something and she hates it so much she wants to run.

But maybe that's the flip side of hope; once you start seeing the magic everywhere, it starts seeing you too. Salim gives her a smile.

“Wednesday did not want me in Virginia.”

Laura wipes away tears. “Are you so sure? I mean…are we so sure about that?”

Salim shakes his head. “Belief does not come with surety." His voice is strong, firm. "The Jinn spoke of wanting more; we need more, Laura. This is not just about you and your revenge. This is about change.”

The Morrigan is growing restless. “Enough talk. Do you give it freely?”

Salim’s voice doesn’t shake. “I do.”

The dawn is bright and stunning and bathes the house in gold as Salim’s screams echo through the valley.

Laura feels something pierce her brain and it’s so painful she can’t speak for a moment before the ground spins and changes.

_She’s at a table across from Wednesday, food on her plate and discomfort in her veins. She feels worried, nervous, the strangest sense of being in the wrong place at the wrong time._

_“Er, we don’t do toasts in Egypt.”_

_Her own voice surprises her. “Yes, it’s not appropriate in Islam either…but I echo your sentiment.”_

_“Well I thank you for that, then. Sometimes amazed we can sit at the same table. Let us enjoy this moment while we can. My presence back on earth here has been felt by old and new. Gungnir is whole again; Yggdrasil is all grown up which means the proverbial shit is about to hit the fan and this is our proverbial Last Supper. Hmm? Are we ready? I am. A compact then. To war or the end of the world, huh?”_

_Ah, surprise surprise. Somebody forgot to call me down to dinner.”_

_His voice is rough but clear. Her heart stops and she wants to turn and stand and run but she is bound in this body, in this memory, repeating only the same steps. _

_"Nobody’s stopping you drawing up a chair.” There’s a hatred in Wednesday’s good eye that he doesn’t bother to hide._

_He gestures at the table. "Except for the fact that there’s no more fucking chairs. I’m feeling a bit like the 13th fairy, I have to say.”_

_She wants to say quit the shit, quit being cocky, let’s fucking get out of here right now you Ginger Asshole. She wants to run and grab his hand and drag him behind her._

_Instead she hears herself speaking again. “Ah, here, uh, take my chair.”_

_She gets up, moves to let him sit as if playing her part in a play she didn't sign up for._

_“Why all the long faces? Banshees’ wailing got you down?" He pauses and she sees a little bit of the showman then, a willing audience making him confident. "But you’re eatin’ their food. That’s good.”_

_She sits down again but wants to stay upright, to back him with whatever bullshit nonsense insanity he’s about to pull. She wants to stand next to him and raise her chin at Wednesday but this is not her story, these are not her lines._

_“Thought you would’ve known better.”_

_Wednesday’s face is an amused, polite “do go on” and Laura feels her heart beginning to race, this body familiar with and frightened by the violence in the air. She feels him tapping at her shoulder_

_“You ever hear what happens when you eat a fairy’s food?” He leans down and she looks over her shoulder at him and he’s there, so close, so real she wants to cry. She wants to scream at him, to hit him, to ask him why they fuck he had to pull this shit and ask his forgiveness for her part in it all. She wants to kiss him, fuck him, steal a car with him and take them both away from here._

_“You’re in their debt now.”_

_He's smiling that shit eating smile and it’s genuine, as if a weight has been lifted, as if he’s come to a conclusion long thought forgone. He looks tired but younger, ready for something._

_“Fuck the fairies.” Wednesday doesn’t hide the venom now, clearly angered by some kind of realisation, and Sweeney’s tone is conspiratorial as he speaks to the body she’s inhabiting._

_“You gonna let him talk about us like that?”_

_She turns away, feeling a prickling discomfort with every aspect of the confrontation._

_“I didn’t spoil your appetite, did I, old man?” He looms over the table and something that could be fear in another lifetime flashes briefly across Wednesday’s face before the anger and annoyance take precedent. “Means I don’t owe you anymore. Not a hair on my fuckin’ arse.”_

_He takes a swig and moves slowly to the table._

_“Don’t. Get. In. The. Way.”_

_He's speaking to Shadow, and she wonders what happened to lead them here before realising that her former husband is holding something against the table top._

_The spear. _

_Sweeney goes to grab it and Shadow’s hand slams down. Sweeney looks tired, annoyed, and ready._

_“Let go of the spear. It’s between me and Wednesday.”_

_Shadow turns, stands._

_“Can’t do that.”_

_Sweeney’s voice is a booming order._

_“Clear the room.”_

_She finds herself standing and trying to move between them and in the back of her mind Salim grows a hundred feet tall for being so fucking brave between this bullshit. She wonders how he has this bravery, this peace keeping instinct, and knows that he walks in his God's footsteps for better or worse._

_“Please, friends-“_

_“No!”_

_The Jinn’s voice is clear and low, and there’s something in it that could be admiration, or at the very least respect. “Let him have this.”_

_She looks at them both and then moves away, glancing down and taking in the heavy wood, the blade, the runes carved over it. The feeling of power it radiates, heavy and rich and hungry. She mind files the image, burns it into her neurons._

_And then she follows the Jinn and walks away._

_“Made me a promise, Shadow.”_

_She hears the warning in his voice and then Bilquis’ low heel clicks and then nothing._

The memory ends and she empties her stomach onto the grass.

She can see Salim on the ground, skin pallid and dark circles under his eyes, chest moving in shallow breaths. She sees blood at his nose, at his ears, and she struggles not to wretch as she lurches towards him.

The Morrigan’s voice is sharp, harsh.

“There isn’t time; he is alive, he will live, you have my word. You _must_ find Gungnir while you can.”

She wants to argue but she can’t have him looking like that for nothing, the Morrigan’s tone pushes her forward.

“Hold it in your mind, Laura Moon; seek it out.”

She can’t breathe, the ground won’t stop spinning, but she reaches out and opens herself to the hoard. She concentrates one what she’s searching for, tries to focus, and when her hand bumps against wood she pulls it hard.

Gungnir.

She screams.

It burns.

Holding it is like dipping her hand into nitrogen or molten rock, the heat of it seems impossible to experience without her skin melting away, and she cries out again.

She loses it for a moment but forces it back into her hand and grits her teeth as tears pour over her face.

The spear is huge, stunningly crafted, and weighty beyond its physical dimensions. The runes carved over it are clear and bright, and she feels a humming ring in the coin as she clutches the shaft.

The end is covered in tacky, dried blood and she swallows heavily, touching it with shaking fingers, hissing as it burns and then letting out huff of relief when the blood comes away easily.

The burning is almost too much for her, she feels whatever coin-powered magic in her blood being sapped away so much faster than other times she has sought the hoard. She can barely focus enough to keep it in her hand, feels parts of her being sucked dry.

But she has the blood. 

She lets out a shout of joy/ She has the blood, she has the spear, she can do this. She can bring herself back and end Wednesday's bullshit and then she can find a way to have him back in the world and watch him steal cars and drink whisky and start fights and piss of other gods and generally make a nuisance of themselves, together.

The hope in her chest has bloomed fully, bright and glorious and infectious, and she feels tears of happiness (and pain, because her hand is still melting) slip over her cheeks.

Something away from the spear catches her attention and she looks up.

She freezes, suddenly paying attention to anything but the burn.

The Morrigan is watching her movements closely. 

So closely. 

Anticipatory. 

There is a gleam the deity’s eyes as she takes in the spear, her otherworldly focus now honed to a single point, and the prickling sensation over Laura’s skin begins to turn into a slow beating dread that works its way up her legs, her stomach, seizing her chest.

Laura feels her heartbeat slow slightly and she then she knows. She looks at the smear of blood on her finger tips.

Her voice is small, much smaller than she’d like.

"This won't work, will it?"

The pain is building now.

She knows…she knows fully, but she still needs to hear it. The Morrigan's calm face doesn’t change. 

"No."

"It needed to be given freely, didn't it?"

"Yes."

The agony is draining her, she can’t think, can barely breathe in the wake of the sizzling of her flesh and the leeching of her strength. The spear is heavy even for her coin-enhanced body, and the runes make her lip curl, tasting metallic and cruel.

"You...you needed me to get this."

The Morrigan is quiet for a moment before answering, as if the truth is uncomfortable but something she wants to offer. 

"He…the one you know as Mad Sweeney has never before taken someone through the hoard. You were the only one who could access it."

For a moment Laura can’t speak, the burning in her hand is excruciating and yet she cannot let go, knowing somehow that this work has cost her. She can feel it in her bones, feel the draining, feel the vestiges of power.

She knows with everything that she has that once she pulls the spear fully into the world and her body is no longer connecting it to the hoard, she will drop.

“This…this will kill me.”

Not just kill her; this will drain the last of her, turn her into fuel for a weapon to exist in the world, a sacrifice to a God she hates. That is the price of bringing the spear back into the world.

The Morrigan does not sugar coat, and her eyes are full of sorrow. “Yes.”

Laura feels her eyes prick.

"Salim?"

"_He_ will survive." The rest of the sentence is left to hang and she feels something inside her break.

She doesn’t want to die…again (_and that’s not all, is it love? you started to hope, didn’t you? started to think that maybe if you could bring this back, there was a way to get back other things you’ve lost? started to slip into something bright and golden and fucking imaginary..._)

There will be no revenge on the man who used her life like a very minor pawn piece, no opportunity to breath and taste and touch and know it is real, no opportunity to be a part of something larger except to give her life for the sake of a single weapon and be tossed aside like tissue paper.

She feels her throat close and her hand shakes with the effort of holding on to the relic, which wants more than anything to be fully drawn into the world.

She hates how lost her voice sounds, hates the hurt and pain in it, but the words push themselves out like they can’t possibly reside in her chest any longer.

“How could you do this do me?”

The Morrigan divides into Morrigna, splitting into three and returns to one again in an instant. Her face is lined but proud, shoulders back and white hair setting off her dark eyes.

"This is bigger than you and your unlife, Laura Moon."

It isn't unkind and maybe that is the worst part. There is nothing personal about this, but the decision would have been made again and again and again. 

How hard, how terribly, terribly hard it is to hold on to a life that is so wildly unimportant to others (_ain't like it was important to you, Dead Wife...why should they care about it?_)_._

Laura shakes her head to clear the voice she knows isn't him and hears her flesh begin to sizzle.

“All the research, this house, Essie’s life…it was all a lie.” The Morrigan does not answer and the tears pour faster and faster, costing her more and more. “What about the dreams? Was any of it real?”

“You needed belief to access the hoard, and you needed hope to believe. We did try to make something…appealing, so you would feel you had something to chase, a purpose and a life.”

Laura has to think for a moment, remembering when she’d fallen asleep under the tree outside.

“That awful technicolour thing with Shadow? That’s what you thought…”

She lets the words trail off and the Morrigan shrugs. “It seemed appropriate, given your history.”

Laura is too angry to correct the false assumption, her entire arm shaking with the effort of holding the spear here.

“And the others?”

Strip clubs and strange worlds and flies covering everything.

“Your dreams are largely your own.”

Her hand is smoking where she holds Gungnir. The silence stretches between them and the Morrigan, apparently done with the empathy portion of the morning, speaks again in a voice that shifts, splitting and rejoining into one interwoven tone.

"Little one, you have felt the shifting of the world. You are a part of this and yet not; your role has been spelled out for some time. Odin must be stopped; you know this. You want him gone. With your help we can end this; pass me the spear."

Laura looks at the spear destroying her hand and back to the Morrigan.

"You can't take it, can you? It has to be given freely?" 

The Morrigan isn't smiling anymore and something dark shifts behind her eyes. 

"Give me Gungnir."

Laura feels her flesh melting but grips tighter, remembering.

“He told me, you know. That fucking with people is all you do. But that’s not true, is it? You use them too.”

The betrayal is cutting deep, too deep. She hates herself; she is foolish for trusting, for hoping. She is raw and exposed, feels a scab has been torn off and she’s left covered in her own insides, pain pouring down her body like intestines spilling out.

She feels those tentative tendrils of hope the day wove around her heart leech away into the ground, gone from her, the absence after experience far more painful than the numbness of cynicism ever was.

She looks at the spear obliterating her hand.

“If you want to honour his memory then let me finish what he started.”

It’s a cheap play, and Laura shakes her head but keeps her eyes fixed on the spear as it continues to destroy her hand.

Laura looks to where Salim is lies still, and thinks about Essie.

Essie with her flashing eyes and bright red hair.

Essie who believed.

"No."

The Morrigan looks agonised for a moment before cajoling.

"There are other ways, you know, back from even your brink. I could show you."

Promises. Promises. Always a fucking catch.

Laura is so tired of catches.

Tired of everyone treating her life like she did; bug spray and hot tubs.

No more.

She releases the spear back to the hoard, the woman in the living room bursts into a flock of crows, and as they fly from the house the Morrigna scream their fury into the night. 


	11. Chapter 11

The highway is long and dark. Baron Samedi listens to a croon from the radio, something old and wicked, and looks over to his consort.

“You think we’ll get there in time?”

Brigette shakes her head. “No…maybe.”

He keeps his hand on her thigh, rubs his thumb over her skirts. She glances at him and he knows what she’ll ask, lets her ask it anyway.

“Did you dig his grave?”

He shakes his head. “No Maman, ain’t dug nothing for Mad Sweeney. Thought his own would handle that...”

She laughs and there is no joy to it and he hates it, hates the grief there, wants his fierce, firey woman back. 

“Ain’t no one left to.”

“Well at least we’ll-“

He is cut off as she slams on the breaks to avoid hitting the woman in the middle of the road.

The Baron sees the three of her and then one of her, still tripled and yet whole. The Morrigan’s eyes are full of pain and her arms covered in black feathers, unable or unwilling to shift and adjust.

“That fuckin…”

Brigette is out of the car and slamming the door to stride towards the battle goddess with anger in her eyes.

The slap echoes through the night.

The Baron exits and leans against the car and lights his cigar, watches his lady at work. She is glorious like this, he thinks, fire in her eyes and skirts swirling around her like smoke. Rage and obscenities pouring from her.

“You…djol kaka fuckin’ nonsense. Dúr soith, do you realise what you’ve done?”

The Morrigan pulls her shoulders back, the skin of her cheek reddening as she forces out her words through gritted teeth.

“I have tried-“

“Fout tonè! You have opened up the door to that land! You have laid it open for him!”

The Morrigan looks like she has been slapped again, a realisation she cannot properly process.

“But, how-“

“You built hope, you encouraged belief. The ground, the house…it can’t stay dormant. And then you stole it away. You left a rift.”

The Morrigan shakes her head.

“Without that spear we cannot defeat Wednesday. The girl just needed to-”

“Die! Ou te mande ti fi a mouri! Ou te mande pou san! Ou te bay espwa l 'ak Lè sa a, te vòlè li! We don’t do that, we can’t do that.”

The Morrigan looks abashed and hurt but straightens.

“She is one girl and the only one who could reach-“

“She ain’t meant to reach! He left it there for a reason, you know this!”

The Morrigan’s eyes flash. “He clearly wanted someone to get in; Brigid, she pulled out his spear.”

“I know! And that’s why-“

“No, NO.” The Morrigan steps closer and Brigette holds her ground. “She pulled out _his_ spear.”

They stare at one another silently and eons pass between them.

“He didn’t…that thing is long lost.”

“Apparently not. Which means-“

“Which means _nothing_.”

But Maman Brigette’s eyes are wide and she looks back at her consort. He doesn’t smile, comfortable blending into the night, top hat sharp and a skull ghosting over his face. She sees what she needs to and turns back to the Morrigan.

“Nothing for you to concern yourself with. You should have left well enough alone, little bird. Now we gotta join this fight.”

There is an ancient hurt in the Morrigan's eyes and part of Brigette wants to splinter into three and hug every part of her former family. 

“You should be standing by my side, you were one of us-“

“Tais toi. Silence. No more.” Brigette’s eyes are cold. “I was changed and shifted and brutalised. Se mwen Maman Brigette. I am not that, not anymore.”

She stands up straight and the flash of the skull crosses her face, a low and heady drumming echoing through the night. She shifts her body in the ghost of a banda and Baron Samedi smiles. Her voice, her movements, are hypnotic.

“You toyed outside your box, now those lands are open and we are all at risk. Mare tet ou, mare vant ou, mare ren ou, yo prale we ki jan yap met a jenou.”

The Morrigan’s battle stance is lowering in the ebb and wake of the rising power, and as she settles back there are tears in her eyes.

“You may have found another home but you can’t hide from this war; none of us can.”

The Baron chews his cigar and speaks for the first time.

“Lucky for you, there are others who’ve been layin’ their own plans.”

The Morrigan’s eyes are wide and Brigette sighs.

“Get in the car. We got places to go.”

***

Laura places Salim on the bed, wipes blood from his nose and ears.

She strokes his chin. 

His breathing is shallow and rapid, but it's there. His cheeks already have more colour and she is relieved, unwilling to think of him as a sacrifice, he's far too brave for that. She doesn't bother thinking about hospitals; even if there was something nearby she's fairly sure they won't know how to deal with supernatural memory splinters at least.

Instead she covers him in a blanket and takes her hollowed out self to the living room where she stands and tries to remember how to exist.

The spear will not give her life.

There will be no second chance.

She won't end Wednesday's cruelty or find out his grand plan.

She won't bring anyone back.

The tears slip freely over her cheeks and somehow this grief is worse than when she first arrived. That had hurt, had drained her, and made her feel alone...but this was somehow harsher, colder, and sharper.

She hadn't believed in anything and by the time she was confused enough to consider it, he was gone.

Now?

Now there is nowhere to hide from the reality that she had hoped, she had thought, she had believed she could actually change something. This is the grief that comes from betrayal, from giving over a part of yourself and having it used, twisted, and flung back.

This is the grief of knowing that hope is a weapon and can be wielded, and not even by someone who truly hates her. She’s nothing in this story, a push and pull lever, something to be employed and directed but nothing more than a means to an end.

She can see it for what it was.

No one else could get to the hoard; they needed someone connected, and the coin had left enough magic in her to provide that connection, compounded by her having travelled with him. Dumb luck and raw chance had lead her here.

Gods seeing an opening and taking it.

She had let it in and it had flooded her being and she thought maybe this was within her control, that she had a fighting chance at building something.

She walks out to the porch and is unsurprised to see the man in front of the house. 

“Thought you couldn’t come here. “

Wednesday’s smile is a smug, anticipatory oil slick.

“I’m a man of many talents, you should know that by now. Besides, the thing that was keeping me from here is gone now.”

She thinks she’s meant to ask what and why but doesn’t bother. He makes a moue of distaste before continuing, gesturing at her sallow skin, the open wound on her hand.

“You look good, my dear, time in the country suits you.”

She says nothing and he stands, walking slowly towards her, and she knows somehow that he is not here to end this right now.

"Still can't come inside, can you?" 

She wishes he would, wishes he'd step up to the porch and end her, and it's like he hears her thoughts.

“Not yet. On the solstice, I will come for you. You will give me my spear, and then you will die as you were meant to.”

She wishes there was a spark of something to latch onto, to feel angered by.

“And if I refuse?”

He shrugs.

“Why would you?”

They stare at one another and she sees it all.

She sees his hatred, his desire for power, his arrogance and manipulation.

She thinks about Essie’s strength and drive to survive, her ability to adapt and refusal to cease existing, constantly looking to change her luck with word and deed.

She waits for her own rising, defiant anger. Waits for the brattish, stubborn self-centeredness that has gotten her into and out of trouble her whole life. Waits for that ability to fight back, that desire to fuck his shit up just to be a bitch, to come through.

(at another time, perhaps she would wonder if that’s what hope looked like for her…why else would she have tried to survive for this long?)

She tries desperately to find herself in this mess.

It isn’t there.

There is nothing there.

He gives her a pleasant smile, a gracious wave and walks back up the path. 

She inhales.

Exhales.

Unnecessarily.

She stands there for a while before her feet begin to move one in front of the other of their own volition.

She wonders where the day has gone. The sky is black and she would enjoy the stars if the part of her brain attuned to beauty was still operational.

She considers, briefly, the fact that she has apparently stood in the porch for hours, staring at nothing.

Seems fitting.

The valley below is beautiful, even in the night time. She feels nothing for it, the bright and fragrant blooms will soon be sepia, and then grey. The rich perfume in the air will fade.

Her feet continue and she finds herself shuffling down into a field of flowers and thinks, at another time, she would have enjoyed the irony of it. Maybe the Laura of bug spray and disappointment would have found something morbidly funny about being here, in this place, a corpse on the ground surrounded by flowers. She lies flat and looks up at the stars and begins to feel a chill.

The earth is cold now, the flowers losing the heat of the sun, and she wonders if perhaps this is the most fitting of ends, all things considered.

If she dies now instead of later, he has no one to get the spear.

Maybe that’s the best route here. The easiest. A last act of defiance to just give in to the exhaustion, the gaping and empty hole inside of her finally seeming like a safe place to curl up inside.

She won’t give him the spear.

She'll go to the ground.

She'll be done with all of this.

She wonders, briefly, what will await her. Will Anubis reopen her hot tub to nothingness? Does he take requests? 

She closes her eyes, decision made, until her reverie is broken by a mocking drawl.

“Well ain’t this just the saddest little zombie you ever did see?”

***

Shadow doesn't know where they're going, or why, but his skin has stopped crawling and he feels as if maybe this is where he needs to be.

He could probably do without being stuck in a side car, but overall it's a feeling of positivity.

Or being high.

He's not sure at this point. 

But he's on his way somewhere, to see something, and there's a lightness in his chest he hasn't felt in some time.

They pull into a bar and he sees Bilquis listening intently to a woman in a headwrap and a tall man in a top hat. He sees grave dust around them and fear coils in his gut, their eyes snapping to him suddenly as if they've smelt his reaction. 

Another woman, dark and pale, flickering between a leather vest and a bare chest, is sitting quietly as the other 3 speak in hushed voices. 

"Ostara coaxes the field into bloom; the ground is ripe and ready."

"You know there's no going back from this. No one is powerful enough to face him, not any more. We're walking into a massacre."

Bilquis nods. 

"Yes, but we will have something he doesn't."

The woman in the headwrap turns to Shadow and stands suddenly. 

"Your hands...they're covered in it."

She moves towards him quickly, the woman with black hair suddenly rising as well, and the man in the top hat stands too, blocking the first woman's path. 

"Non, stop-" 

"Li te asasinen-" 

"Chere. Look again, he ain't human." 

She stares him and Shadow feels flayed alive and her eyes widen. 

"How?" 

Bilquis' voice is a whisper. "Wednesday's planning has run deeper than any of us knew."

Shadow clears his throat, desperate to escape the other woman's piercing stare. 

"What do we have that he doesn't?" 

Bilquis smiles. "A story."

***

Laura stares.

She recognises him from the House on the Rock, from that diner.

_"You are the biggest, most unlucky leprechaun I have ever met." _

_"Bugger off." _

_"Bugger yourself off, bitch!” _

She says nothing, too tired and cold inside to move, and he steps towards her.

“So that's it, huh? You're gonna let him win.”

“How is any of this my responsibility?”

“Because secretly you want it to be.”

“Fuck you.”

The change is swift, dapper suit gone and suddenly he is ancient, power radiating from his being, skin marked in white and his eyes on fire. She has gotten too used to Sweeney, to flinging attitude around like birdseed, to having a coin to power her and a hulking leprechaun for back up.

He grabs her, hauls her against the night’s sky.

“Do not disrespect me, girl.” His voice has changed, thick and rich, the lilting tones of heat and sun.

He drops her and suddenly Mr Nancy is standing much further back, all dapper suit and stylish hat, adjusting his tie carefully as he picks his way towards her.

"Listen up, little white girl. I understand you might be feeling a bit hard done by, what with you corpsifying and losing that oversized ox before you could admit to wanting to climb him like a tree..." 

Laura stares, mildly amazed at both the number and speed of words coming out of Nancy's mouth in a single breath.

"...but I'm gonna need you to look past your decaying hormones long enough to see a bigger picture here."

She doesn’t bother to respond and he rolls his eyes.

“So that’s it then, you’re just gonna lie there?”

She feels it then, a prick of anger as _his_ words, _that_ moment, are flung at her.

"Stop."

"You're angry?"

"Of course I'm fucking angry."

Even to her ears the words are too quiet, too exhausted.

He chuckles. "You don't look angry to me. You look lost and pathetic. You look like something that ain't got long for the world and it's still longer than you should have."

She feels it again at that, a little prick of something sharp and annoying. "Who the fuck do you think yo-"

"I know exactly who the fuck _I_ am. And I know WHY the fuck I am. Can you say that much, Laura lost in a strange space Moon?"

She can't. He knows it, she knows it, she doesn't try to pretend otherwise, but that prick of anger makes her speak again.

"McCabe."

"OK, that's a start. And what are you, Laura McCabe?"

She closes her eyes because she doesn't fucking owe him anything. She doesn't want to feel anything. She is tired, hollow, hopeless. She is done.

And yet she cannot shake that sharp little annoyance burrowing down into her chest like a pin in her skin. 

She thinks about being thrown away like a used toy because they needed Shadow broken.

She thinks about needing to rely on the mercy of undertakers and the goodwill of taxi drivers.

She thinks about begging for favours and being brought up cold, of being thrown in a trunk in pieces and then used up and thrown away. 

She thinks about her burnt hand and her decimated hope.

She thinks about finding something that could maybe possibly strangely have been something real only to fuck it up herself and then lose it because of this stupid war. 

When she speaks it’s with conviction. 

"I'm angry."

He claps and smiles his brilliant smile. 

"WELL GOOD! Angry gets shit done!"

His smile is so sharp she wonders if she could cut herself on it, but his words are measured and powerful, and she feels the truth in them.

"We exist because of anger, girl. We exist because of fear and hope and rage. We were the stories told to warn children and inspire joy and set revolutions on fire."

She can feel his own anger rolling over her, like waves crashing against her, and it's sparking something off. She can feel it snowballing, that anger, as if it has latched onto something inside her and is pulling her along like a leash as he continues.

"You been traipsing around like you're above all that, like you're better than those who dreamed us into existence."

He grips her chin, hard, and she fights back tears in the face of his intensity, his presence a force of nature.

His voice is heavily accented again, rich and deep and booming. 

"Hear me, girl. Those who came before you called us into the night and drew us into existence and fed us again and again with stories and their blood until we were here and that is more than you, Laura fucking McCabe, even did in your damn life."

He drops her chin, standing again and pacing as he continues, his voice once more a mocking drawl.

"What was the plan, girl? You been thinking you could creep up on Wednesday like a fucking ninja? Poke him in the back? You think you can wipe out one God and a dead one will rise up? 

She feels the tears slipping down the face as the truth in his words salts the wound. 

He's right, every word, and her anger starts to fade in the face of that emptiness. 

"You want Wednesday gone? It's time to get angry, stop rooting around in a dead man's pockets and do something real." 

This cuts through her emptiness. 

"Well why the fuck don't YOU do it then? You people are gods, why am I anywhere in this fucking story? I didn’t want to be a part of any of it!" 

“No, you just let a black man take the fall for your lily ass in prison and then still wound up fucking his friend.”

She stares, unable to argue with any of it.

“You got all these parts, all these grievances… all these bits and pieces and you’ve turned them into a story. Shit happening to you that you’re owed something for, even our unlucky leprechaun. But what if you weren’t the centre of the story – what if you were just another chapter?”

“You think I don’t know that? I’ve followed Shadow halfway across the country only to be told I’m not fucking necessary, every god I meet is doing some bigger picture shit, and the one fucking person who could keep me alive…you think I don’t know how small I am in all this?”

“Always with the victimhood.” He shakes his head. “Not being the centre doesn’t make you small; it makes you a part of something.”

She thinks of Sweeney then, griping and snarking and incisively insightful about who and what she was, is, pretended to be.

"We all need that, even the ones who act like they don't. Gods don't exist because one person gets an idea; it's the shared story that builds us into being. We're only as strong as the story."

Mr Nancy continues and something bright and joyful flashes in his eyes.

“The thing about stories is they’re malleable. Ain’t nobody bound to keep walking the same road; not when they’re choosing the next word they use. Words become our footsteps."

He kneels down next to her and watches her with calculating eyes.

"It all comes down to the story, see. That’s what you get to control. The one you’re being told, the one you’re telling yourself…”

He gives her with a knowing smile. “…and the one you tell. That’s the most important one of all in the end. It’s the one that lasts after you’re dead and buried good and proper.”

The burn on her hand stings as badly as the tears as he continues, picking up speed and his own anger pushing his voice harder. 

"You can't mock the story, our stories, and use the story at the same time, girl. Can't try to get into faery gardens to find your revenge and still make fun of those who left their bowls of milk." 

He lights a cigarette, once more dapper suited, voice calm and considered. 

"You want to use the story for yourself? You gotta become a part of it, willingly."

She refuses to wipe away her tears, refuses to give in to the urge to close her eyes and disappear back into the earth. Instead she asks, because why the fuck not. 

"How the fuck do I do that?"

He stares at her for a moment and she feels stripped, measured, as if he is wondering whether she is really worth all of this.

"Well, I find the best way to start a story...is to tell it."

She stares at the space where he was and tries to lock down precisely what happened in between him being here and then being gone but her mind supplies nothing. 

Well, not nothing. 

It lets the advice, cryptic and insane, settle against her throat like a hand. It begs her attention, demanding her focus, and slowly transform into something resembling understanding.

Knowledge.

She opens her hand, the coin warm in one palm, the other an open, gaping piece of unhealing flesh and visible bone.

_"What you need, Dead Wife, is a resurrection.” _

The soft light from inside the house calls her, golden and comforting, and she could simply stay here and watch it. It'd be better than trying to interpret yet more cryptic advice delivered by an untrustworthy God when her hand and her heart still burn with the last betrayal.

Maybe she'll disappear into the ground and the maggots inside her will finally take over, leaving Salim to find the coin in the middle of the fresh earth.

But that prick of anger is there and that knowledge is waking something inside her.

Something stubborn.

She swallows thickly and stands, fighting her body’s desire to stay still and quiet and sink into the earth.

Time for a story. 

She takes a step.

And another. 

And then another.

She keeps focusing on the next step, again and again, and with each one she feels herself standing straighter and her anger building and then suddenly she's inside the house again.

She gathers every book, every note, every scribbled idea. She holds armfuls of papers and tomes and inhales. She piles them, pulling Ibis' book into her lap and pouring over the familiar words. She reads the words again and again and again. Says them out loud, changing and tweaking as she goes. 

Once she is satisfied she bolts to the room where Salim is sleeping and shakes him awake.

"Does your car still work?"

He blinks at her, bleary eyed and struggling to wake up. "Why? Where do you want to go?" 

"Come on, tomorrow's Saturday, we've got work to do."

"Laura, where are we going?" 

She turns and gives him her most reassuring smile. 

"The playground." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You asked the girl to die! You asked for blood! You gave her hope and then stole it!


	12. Chapter 12

In a local bar they’ve started to consider a meeting ground, Nancy exhales low. The place is empty, a private party just for two.

"The solstice comes, the end approaches. How is she?" 

“She’ll do it…for all that she don’t know why.”

“Good. She does not realise how important her part will be.”

His eyes narrow. “You’re placing an awful lot of faith in a girl who stumbled into this mess by sheer shitty luck.”

Luck, luck, luck….fuck.

"Anasi, do you trust me?" 

“Endlessly.”

Anansi holds out his hand to his Queen, resplendent in blood red and dripping in gold, clothed and naked. She takes it graciously, lets him to lead her to the centre of the room. 

A gentle trumpet, lazy and winding, fills the air with a song of the blues. Rich and meandering and the tiniest bit sad, a gravelly voice joining it to proclaim the vice and virtue and value of love and all its mysteries.

They dance slowly, he lets her lead, as he will always do.

Bilquis strokes her hand down his back and he resists the urge to kneel, for now.

Anansi inhales deeply, breathing in sand, spice, the heady perfume of her power. This is why they tell stories, capture pain and joy and triumph and trickery. 

“And you will follow?”

He pulls her close and murmurs against her skin, succinct. 

"Always."

She strokes his cheek and tells him her plan, all of her plan, and his eyes widen. 

She presses a kiss to his lips and then leaves him standing in the centre of the room.

The fools. They have always known she was the survivor - that she could and would carve her way forward. 

But this? 

He begins to laugh, rich and low and deep in his belly. 

They had forgotten, all of them, just how long she had been standing. 

They thought the Queen of Sheba would try to survive, carve out something meagre. 

They had no idea. 

***

Salim had thought she was joking. 

Well, not joking, but at least using a euphemism. 

And yet here they are...at the local playground. 

Laura exhales, adjusts the pretty bow she has tied in her hair, smooths her hands down the soft, floaty dress that reminds her of New Orleans. 

"How do I look?" 

He shrugs. "Like a fairy."

She laughs. 

Now or never.

It turns out she doesn't need to worry. Kids are trained from early to appreciate an adult dressed all pretty, big book in her hands and a sweet smile on her face. They ignore the bandage around her palm and the occasional fly and she wears enough make up to hide her sallow skin.

They crowd, the crowd attracts more, and then there are 12 sets of eyes staring up at her. 

Laura begins to speak. 

"Have you ever heard of a leprechaun...?"

***

“You don’t call me – I call _you_.”

Bilquis smiles at the angry man child in front of her.

To think, she had owed him once.

“You answered still. Perhaps you grow tired of their whims?”

He stares at her for a moment, tight with frustration and need. 

“What they’re doing…isn’t progress.”

She smiles her knowing smile and tilts her head.

“You have progress at your fingertips.”

He stares at her and she can read his desire, his anger at it, and something underneath.

Not a wish for something pure, but a seething resentment for the lack of foresight, for the willing obliteration his compatriots are pushing for. Innovation can't survive in a decimated world, there can be no progress, no advancement, with nobody to advance. 

To this point his allegiances have been appropriate and clear, but no true innovator seeks nihilism, no one born of and driven by the act of creation can seek a lessening of imagination. 

He grits his teeth. 

“What do you need?”

Her smile grows. “A signal boost.”

***

Salim and Laura start small. Literally. 

They’re at one of the playgrounds in the town nearby, Salim flicking through books in the car as she smiles at little people and spreads a story.

It’s the fourth playground they’ve visited today, and they still have two more towns nearby to visit before dusk. 

“Miss Laura, tell us more about the treasure and the sun?”

She smiles.

This story is one of warrior kings and birds, Gods who fall, memories that splinter, leprechauns who cross the world. This story is one of debt and loss and magic.

So much magic.

This is day five of storytelling, and they have hit over 20 playgrounds with their little tales. The children are munching fruit and crowding onto benches, or sitting in little circles with their legs crossed.

The children wanted stories.

And they wanted Laura, the pretty little woman with brown curls and big eyes whose delicate frame reminded children of fairies, Laura told them. Letting them come to her on park benches, sharing grapes and smiles, a sweet wave at parents unconcerned with the harmless lady chatting about fairies.

Laura with her sparkling blood, with the vestiges of borrowed magic in her veins, Laura whose voice could twist and turn a tale and whose tongue could spit it out.

Laura, who has never wanted children but enjoys their wide eyes and open hearts and the honesty with which they exist, Laura wants to tell them.

Needs to.

***

“Something is happening.”

Mr World’s voice is low and harsh, an electronic thrum of separation and reconcile as his tone duplicates and shifts.

New Media shakes her head. “I don’t understand this; we have the narrative, we have the reach. This shouldn’t be possible.”

In the corner Tech Boy is very quiet, and stays quiet for some time.

***

Laura tells the stories.

All along her path she peppers tales and myths and suggestions into little minds. Harmless, kind, bright stories designed to be enjoyed briefly and entertained a little, with a small percentage going on to actually try an offering.

She tells stories of what she believes, what she has seen. She tells the stories from Mr Ibis’ book, tempered with her other readings, refined through discussions with Salim and the copious notes he is taking the whole time.

She tells story after story after story. 

And they believe, because she believes. 

She feels a little like a cult leader but with fairy tales (_is there much of a difference, love?_).

She shares the stories because they’re inside her and the tugging in her chest that used to house a coin is now thrumming with the need to pour them out so that somebody, anybody knows. 

She shares the stories to feel magic, and maybe even hope. 

"Let me tell you of the spider who tricked the python into stretching himself…”

"If the Baron refuses to dig your grave, you had better be prepared to wander this earth..."

"Have you ever seen the evening star? Do you know she has sisters?"

"The desert winds howled with secrets, and the Jinn, neither good nor evil but smokeless fire personified, swept throughout the town…" 

"They blow both ways, so best to leave them a little something as a please, and a thank you. After all, manners are so important." 

***

They return home (_and that's why it is, huh, not just the house?_) each evening, exhausted and depleted. They enter a routine quickly.

Salim makes a light meal while Laura wipes playground dust and grime from her skin. 

She stares at herself in the hallway mirror, eyes roving for the slow decay she can feel creeping over her, the ticking count down. 

They sit on the porch and as she rests her tired voice he reads to her from Essie's books. 

Sometimes, long after they've retired, she watches the moon. Her need for sleep is lessening but she still tries, still hopes to dream. 

***

Laura tells stories. She tells them in parks, in a school yard mistaken for a teacher, inside a children's hospital. She tells them for teenagers outside the movies who listen with apathetic eyes and ears pricked up. 

She reads them at the old folk’s home. 

She reads them at the library. 

Salim secures the library computer for a few hours and she reads them in front of a camera, sweet and gentle, passionate and wild. She learns them quickly, finds her tone and tune. The computer, old and ill-suited to high volume file sharing, somehow works flawlessly. The video is uploaded, shared, distributed, copied.

They catch many lucky breaks as the story spreads. 

Laura has been telling stories her whole life; it’s nice to tell ones she likes.

***

Shadow and the Jinn arrive at the house one night.

She lets them in and the Jinn heads to Salim's chamber without a word.

Laura pours Shadow a drink and they sit on the porch together without speaking for a long, long time.

"So...you're here."

He nods.

"Whatever you've been up to...people are taking notice."

She looks out over the darkness and wishes she could see a figure approaching the house in the low light. She smiles to herself and Shadow fills the silence.

He tells her about Wednesday's words and Nancy's scheming and places of power and Yggdrasil. He tells her about meeting the Loa and the strangeness he has been feeling, like something is heating his skin. When he finishes he turns, watches her smoking a cigarette and batting away a fly. 

"Do you really know what you're doing here?"

She shakes her head, gnawing on her lower lip with a small smile. 

"Just...telling stories."

***

Children are open to magic. 

Everybody knows this. 

So every story Laura tells, she finishes the same way. 

"And so, perhaps if you leave out a little something, they'll come find you."

She drops her voice low and secretive. 

"If you want to be found."

She plucks a coin from the air and the children cheer at the magic and her work is done. 

***

Their routine expands to include Shadow and the Jinn. 

The latter is content to come and go, off to run whatever errands he sees fit. Sometimes Shadow joins him, and when they come back and speak about loyalties or where someone will be standing. Laura doesn't bother to listen. She has not time for games, knows the war will come and is disinclined to hear their nonsense. 

Instead Laura watches Salim smile, sees the Jinn's expression soften briefly and intimately, and feels both joy and jealousy in equal measures. 

She picks a small piece of dry skin from her shoulder and winces at the smell. She opens the windows as wide as they go, grateful that the season is cooling rather than heating up. 

Shadow comes to the parks with them, finding groups of older kids on the fringes, chatting quietly and slowly they walk closer. 

They want to hear something magical. 

One night when she can't force sleep she heads to the room where he's also struggling. She stands by the bed until he moves aside and she slips between the covers.

He holds her, still and clothed and calm, without saying a word, and they both know it will be the last time they lay together like this.

They both inhale the fact that neither really wants to be held by the other and exhale the realisation that it's OK. 

When she wakes she smiles to see him, and a knot in her heart loosens as she releases a husband and returns with a friend. 

***

Stories are power.

For millennia their power has been contained to a place, to a people.

They may have spread and shifted enough for similarity to exist among some myths (and whether this is a symptom of humanity or raconteuring, you may be the judge), but this would take decades, centuries, whispers passed along through trade and chance encounters. Those places hum and thrum with the power of the story, the blood of the people in these places pumps with the story, until story weaves together belief and hope and then suddenly there is something to hold these things.

Something tangible borne of word and deed; a deity, magic, a god.

Eons are required.

But the world has changed.

The stories shifted and worshipping transport, tech, and globalisation became common place. The Old and New needed to work and exist (together or otherwise). So the story was altered, diluted and boosted, augmented and laughed through.

But the story has never before been told by a brown haired corpse with magic in her veins, and so the story doesn’t just stay in one place.

Jeremy texts his cousin in Indianapolis about the fairy lady in the park. Maya plays Fortnite online with Liam and Mikayla from Nevada, telling them the story in between builds and laughter. Chloe and Atsuko tell their siblings, who share it around school. The teacher picks up on it, linking their chatter to folklore and myth studied in class, and skypes with people in her teacher’s forum about ways to solidify the lessons, sparking ideas in Colorado, New Mexico, and Washington.

Cian tells his father, who calls his mother in New York and puts her on speaker phone, the grandmother’s voice cracking as her grandson tells her stories of her homeland. She tells her friends at the park doing Tai Chi, and Molly O’Riley smiles, remembering when she landed at Ellis Island with her family as little more than a girl.

Fae and gods, the Tuatha De and their pantheon.

The story spreads not over a small area but over the country, sent and skyped and told at summer camp and in ballet classes and whispered to a counsellor and shared amongst mothers and repeated at bedtime.

As the story spreads so do the offerings. Little hands place pieces of their Halloween candy in bowls on their window sills. Old folks with gnarled hands smile as they throw coins into fountains, sending it out with a mix of nostalgia and something else. 

Something like hope. 

And that hope spreads.

***

Mr World is furiously calm. “What is she doing?”

“She is giving everyone a fucking super charge that’s what she’s doing.” New Media is staring with fascination at the screens.

“We have control of every mass media and shared production method; how, HOW is she doing this?”

Tech Boy shrugs. “Humans…they love a good story.”

***

A week into their venture she and Shadow sit on the porch and sip whisky. His voice is low as they watch the sun set. 

"What's the endgame here, Laura?"

She shrugs. "War, I guess. That's what Wednesday wants, right? To destroy the New Gods or something?" 

Shadow is quiet for a moment. "Or something."

Laura tilts her head. "I didn't get why this stuff mattered so much to people, even you. It seems so pointless to just pretend until you believe or keep looking for something when nothing clearly stared back."

"And now?" 

She is very quiet and he knows she's thinking of someone lost. 

"Now I just want something. Magic, gods, power...I don't care what. But for a little while I felt that hope thing and I want that for other people."

"There are plenty of people who need it these days."

She smiles. "I always thought I didn't. I was above it."

She downs the last of her glass and doesn't feel any burn, any taste, only the slip of liquid. 

"Now I'd tell a thousand stories if it meant getting it back."

Shadow is blunt. "It won't...you know that, right? You know what you're doing is laying seeds for a future war and power that you won't even see?" 

"Yep," she turns and gives him a smile he'd once thought of as cheeky and now knows is downright scheming. "But at least I'll fuck up Wednesday's good time."

He laughs because he's only just figuring out that she's a bit mad and a complete bitch and finding he likes this version of her much better than anything he conjured. 

_"Oh ho! You sound like a man who'd fight to get back into those maggoty panties. Are you sure that's what you want?" _

_Shadow's eyes flick to Laura, hissing and crackling her way up the path behind them, batting flies and giving Wednesday attitude, angry and sharp and...dead._

Sweeney had known, way back. 

Sweeney had known a lot. 

They clink their glasses together and enjoy the rest of their drinks in companionable silence. 

***

Shy and awkward it spreads, and the story begets stories. 

Nayyirah asks her mother about the Fae and her mother smiles, telling her about a spider who is a trickster.

Atsuko's grandmother tells her of Amaterasu Ōmikami, the sun goddess.

Aiyana and Dyani listen as their aunt and mother remember the stories of the great White Buffalo.

Natalie's grandmother stops shaping pierogi and takes her granddaughter outside to look at the stars. She points them out, sparkling like jewels, and Natalie comes to school with extra pierogi to share and extra stories to tell. 

Mohammed's uncles play Minecraft with him online and talk about ifrits, exploring a desert world and putting up torches while they remember old tales and older myths. 

The stories are repeated over the phone, twisted into Reddit threads, little poems and bits of artwork spawning on Tumblr and Instagram.

The Old Gods and New all feel it. 

The little offerings, the retellings. Candy sacrificed and memories shared, libations poured out absent mindedly and then with fervour as those who have stopped believing long ago found ground to share and connect. 

Pinches of salt.

Moments of prayer.

Offerings in word and deed.

Similarities are found amongst friends, and online platforms yield analyses and insight into origins on human understandings of the world. People find links and connections and the stories spread and strengthen.

Children ask to hear them again, and again, and continue to lay out treats in the night.

***

“Seriously?”

“We cannot keep saying these things and not giving ourselves over to them.”

She is exasperated and oddly annoyed. 

“Salim not-Salim it’s milk in a bowl…we’re going to wind up with cats.”

They don’t, and he keeps leaving out his bowl of milk, and eventually so does she.

He gives her a wry smile and she tells him to shush.

In the morning the milk is gone. 

She feels nourished.

***

In the wake of the story spreading and forging new pathways to old worlds, Old deities find the trembling in their tired hands becoming manageable, their stooped backs beginning to straighten. 

Those who have been without power for some time find it painful, like a muscle cut off from blood suddenly reacting to an influx. Others latch onto it like hungry piranhas, burning it out too quickly, or hoarding it for later use.

Ostara is left offerings of salt water and bread, blooming brightly against her skin and flushing her with strength.

Anansi finds himself being read about by kids in lower Detroit, Harlem, a few at HBCUs that begin to write essays and spread his story on slam poetry nights and open mics. He amuses himself by appearing as a lecturer, feeling the rush of power as they listen to fire and fury.

Tech Boy finds new coders, disenfranchised and seeking to bring down a government ill designed for their advancement, and pushes their progress as they build new and amalgamated tech on which to base their platform. New sequences, complex algorithms, the whole shebang. 

The Morrigan feels her feathers ruffle as online Wiccan forums revive their interest and send candles and spells to her. She is amused, and then deeply moved, and feels a singing in her veins.

The Loa continue their journey, stopping occasionally to accept a drink at a crossroads, and gather the souls of the dead in that place. They grow stronger.

Shadow wakes in the night and feels himself glowing, warm and brilliant, before it settles back down and he is in the dark once more. 

***

"Do you miss him?" 

If it was anyone else she'd tell them to get fucked and walk away. But it's Salim, who has spent every day of the last week and a bit helping her pull off this madness. Salim whose open, driven soul has offered her so much. 

"...I guess."

They're on the porch and she's watching as he finishes his evening prayer. She has mere days left before her clock runs out, and she's still not feeling done enough to lay down. She's idly flicking the coin over her fingers as she watches him worship. 

She considers his question. 

"All up we were only travelling like 2 weeks. I've been here longer. It's not like we were together."

He's quiet and she says what she hadn't wanted to say. 

"It felt like a lot longer." She thinks and then shakes her head. "That's not true...it's not that it felt that long, it's just that it didn't feel done. It was the beginning, right at the start of something, and then it was gone."

She lights a cigarette and wishes she could taste it but the habit is reassuring. 

"And that's just me. Who the fuck knows what he thought."

She stares at the edge of the prayer mat and rubs the coin between her fingers. 

***

The Loa stand outside the gate and watch the lights of the house go out.

Brigette picks her way towards the porch and stops when she sees the bowl of milk.

Samedi's voice is low in the quiet of the night. "Well, chere...looks like that hope ain't all dried up yet."

Brigette picks up the bowl and drinks the milk in one gulp.

"Not yet; but it's gonna take more than milk to coax him out."

The Baron looks out over the dark of the valley, feels the power of this place, and thinks of potions and pain.

Milk won't cut it. Blood might. 

There is always a price to be paid. 

***

The story comes at a cost.

As it spreads Laura feels her heart slow, her lungs empty, her blood becoming sluggish.

At every telling she feels the magic in her blood becoming less, pouring out over her tongue and settling in other hearts. 

She can feel herself slowing and pushes harder, unwilling to let herself fade from this world without having fucked up Wednesday's plans to the maximum possible effect. Salim says nothing and Shadow tries not to wrinkle his nose as she coughs maggots and coagulated blood into the sink, as she douses herself in fragrance and make up to keep her death from those she shares the stories with.

Still she seeks them out, spreads the tales of Lugh and Brigid and the Morrigan, of Fae, of magic and mischief and guardians. She tells stories of mystery and strangeness, of Baldr and Freya, of Nanook and Sedna. She leaves some stories untold, deliberately, and Odin’s ravens caw their anger into the night.

***

Laura is pushing hard, she knows. It's draining and tiring and difficult.

The decay is creeping over her but finally after days without sleep she feels it dragging down her eyelids, so heavy she may never wake up. 

When she finally dreams she's in that club again. 

_This time it's empty, and she follows the familiar path to the room where he's been. _

_The man in the chair smiles and her blood runs cold. _

_"Should have known even people's dreams about him would involve cheap sex and cheaper whisky."_

_Wednesday is sitting in his chair. _

_Her eyes narrow. _

_"You keep talking a pretty big game for someone who needs a favour from me."_

_As the light shifts his smile becomes a sneer. _

_"You think you're the first who fucked that meathead? You're not special, my dear, you're a putrefying sack of meat."_

_She could point out that she might not be special but she's the only way he'll get his spear, but she's too pissed to be polite, wants this room with a different occupant. _

_"I think your obsession with who I fuck crossed the border from calculating to creepy waaaay before I was with him."_

_His eyebrow twitches and he gives her that innocent expression that makes her want to claw his face off. _

_"With him? Is that what you're calling it now?" _

_The neon lights bathe the room in blue and she tries to imagine herself covered with woad and unafraid of the battles ahead. _

_"Don't you have better things to do than sleep stalk me?" _

_"You're wasting your time."_

_She looks around as if surprised. _

_"Maybe but I like it here, the drinks are great."_

_"Not in here - out there."_

_She holds herself straight, proud. _

_"Seems more like I'm wasting yours."_

_Wednesday stands and she sees him, eye on fire, bearded and ancient, and she smells ozone in the air. _

_His voice has the rich timbre of declaration, of gravity and weight. _

_"I will have my spear. I will have my war. And you, Laura Moon, will return to the nothingness in which you belong."_

_She thinks of little smiling faces turned up to hear stories, full of life and hope. _

_She thinks of Salim and the Jinn and Essie's house. _

_She thinks in the shadows she sees a spear rising, thinks the pole on the stage looks like a weapon. _

_She thinks of a figure sitting in that same chair like its a throne, and she smiles. _

_"You know, even your true form is really fucking short."_

_His eye flares and she is positive that, had this been reality, he would have struck her down. But this is her dream, and he has to settle for impotent, barely leashed rage. _

_She waves her hand and he disappears into hundreds of dollar bills fluttering uselessly in the air. _

_She reaches to snatch one and when she turns back _he's_ sitting in the chair like its a fucking throne and she smiles as she saunters towards him. _

When she wakes up she bruises on her thighs, an ache in her belly, and stories on her tongue.

***

She spreads the tale of a warrior king, a God. 

Day after day, to as many as they can reach, they spread the story. 

As the story spreads so do other things. Hope, connection, memory, myth. Networked and spider webbed and linked like a chain, like threads in a tapestry, sprawling across the country from a single focal point. 

They spread the story day after day for two weeks. 

And then the war begins. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last from me until after Boxing Day. A safe end to the year to you all, delicious humans. Can't wait to pick this up with you!


	13. Chapter 13

The night before the war begins they can feel it in the air.

Shadow is edgy, uncomfortable, the increasing pressure across his being the last few weeks turning into a near constant feeling of phantom itching. The Jinn is withdrawn, choosing to remain outside alone and chain smoke as if he needs to refill his tank. Salim makes tea, sipping it quietly and reading in a chair, ignoring the tension in favour of knowledge.

Laura feels calm.

_“The air feels constipated, like if it could push out a storm it’d be ok.”_

_“Waiting for the sky to fall is going to cause more bother than the sky actually falling.”_

This time it is, of course. There’s tightness in the sky and the weather is cold but she can feel the _something_ coming and she’s ready for it.

Readier than last time, at least.

She steps into the bathroom, batting away one of the few flies still braving the cold. Shadow walks past the door as she runs the hot water.

“Is…that a good idea?”

She doesn’t turn away from the deep tub, just shakes her head and sets down a very full glass of whisky. Four weeks and she still doesn’t prefer it to vodka, no matter how quickly her sense of taste has faded, but she’s committed now, she thinks.

“No, but after tomorrow it won’t matter.”

She’s not being blasé; she can feel it in every part of her, this coming to an end, this finality, and knows she’s not long for the mortal world no matter what happens.

Unlike in life, where her apathy meant something, _anything_, was better than nothing, she’s not seeking out death. Quite the opposite.

Now death is seeking _her_, and she will let it find her, kicking and screaming the entire way.

But first, a bath.

Shadow probably wants to say more but she closes the door without looking at his face and once alone she strips quickly as the bath fills. She adds soap, a handful of flowers and some of the herbs from the garden she started, the one she hopes Salim will continue. The air would be fragrant if she could still smell it, she knows, but she hopes it permeates the house.

It’s nothing like the decadent mess that Bilquis managed to conjure but she smiles anyway.

She can barely feel the temperature but she’s made it warm, if only to heat the fresh herbs and flowers.

All that connective tissue…who cares. She has felt the steady lessening, felt the magic in her veins working harder to keep her going. The Morrigan had said a month; she wonders if the goddess knew she’d be accelerating her own death, or if she’d just gone with what the fates revealed.

Regardless, here she was. 

And it’s fitting for a last night on earth that she get to enjoy a bath. She can’t feel much, can’t taste mushaltat and vodka, can’t feel the burn of a cigarette, can’t even bring herself to the edge and cry his name into the pillow with her mouth and her eyes at the same time.

But she’ll play pretend, once more. Face death cleanly, at least.

She lights a few candles, combs out her dry hair and soaps, washes, rinses, conditions. She gently cleans her body, avoiding anything rougher than her hands lest she pull away parts of matter prematurely, forcing herself to ignore the splitting of autopsy sutures and the looseness in one of her arms. 

When she is clean she sinks down into the water and stays down. She could stay down forever, or at least until the last of the coin’s remnants have left her blood…maybe a day.

She keeps her milky eyes closed and eventually comes up only to stifle a scream.

Maman Brigette smiles.

“Well hello, baby.”

***

Salim sits next to the Jinn on the porch. He does not mind the withdrawal, is comfortable enough in his faith and love to weather the temperamental storm of a smokeless fire ifrit seeking alone time.

Still, he is a better read than most people give him credit for, and the Jinn has words hanging around his head.

“You are worried.”

The Jinn stares into the darkness. 

“We are close to the resolution, and I am safeguarding faith in strange places.” He looks to his empty hands as if they should be holding answers. “I wanted to know more…now I do and I wonder what the cost will be. I have been betrayed before."

Salim smiles and takes his hand. 

“Fuck those assholes.”

The Jinn turns to him in surprise and then laughs, briefly but honestly. It’s enough to make Salim smile shyly, pleased with the reaction.

“Someone very wise once told me that.”

The Jinn watches him a moment longer.

“You…are a surprise to me.”

Salim nods and the Jinn watches the darkness once more. 

“You can still leave, Salim. You can escape all of this and live away from it.”

_“”Do you think he’d do the same for you? I mean, if…if Wednesday asked the Jinn to kill you do you think he would do it?”_

Salim looks out into the night and thinks that, in the right light, the shadow by the tree could be a man standing just out of the reach of the lights. He smiles and imagines who would be watching.

“I could escape, yes. But I would not live, not really.”

The Jinn watches him for another moment and then reaches out, kissing him deeply, as if he wants to memorise every moment of it. Salim returns the kiss with equal fervour, and when the Jinn’s hands tighten around his jaw he stands, walks inside to the bedroom, and knows the ifrit will follow.

***

Laura feels like she should probably shout. Or scream. Or just splash a fuckload of water at the Loa but instead she glares and forces as much demand into her voice as she can.

“Why?"

“Well, chere,” Laura jumps, sending the water sloshing, as the Baron walks around the other side of the tub. He doesn't hide his interest at her naked form as he runs a possessive hand over Brigette’s red curls. “We thought it’d be nice to swing on by.”

Brigette, lovely in the candlelight, leans into her husband’s touch and then fixes Laura with a sharp smile.

“’Specially since y’all left out that lil offerin’. Must say, these days I’d rather rum, no?”

Laura nods, ignoring the prick of sadness and biting her lip. 

“You’ve been taking them.”

Brigette nods. 

“Ain’t so far from Fae that I can’t take somethin’ offered so very freely.”

The Loa taps powdered herbs into Laura’s glass and then sits on the rim of the tub, watching as Laura drinks greedily. She is expecting the slew of maggots that rise from her throat, moving to the other side so they hit the floor with a wet splatter. 

Laura breathes freely, unnecessary but so much more comfortable nonetheless.

“Guess I should say thanks.”

Samedi trails a hand in the water and Brigette smiles her knowing smile as he speaks in his low, melodic sing song. 

“Dead, dead Laura Moon…spreadin’ her stories day by day…hopin’ a god will come out to play.”

Laura rolls her eyes. 

“No need to be an asshole about it." She twitches as Brigette taps more herbs into the water. "Mind telling me why you’re interrupting my last supper, as it were?”

"Tomorrow is the solstice."

Laura stays very still as Samedi's fingers trace her ankle. She feigns indifference. 

"So? Last I saw you two...the Loa weren't playing Wednesday's game."

Samedi holds his wife's eyes. "Game's changed, ain't just ego at risk any more."

He turns back to Laura as his fingers trace her calf and she wonders why she doesn't tell him to stop (_ah, lass, can't exactly say it wasn't good last time, can you…guest appearances and all..._) 

There’s something almost like mocking affection on their faces as they watch her closely. Samedi's voice echoes around the room. 

"You got yourself a place here that's ripe for pluckin', an' a little bird told us that without some help...you're plucked." 

"Seems like last time we all hung out you got that _plucking_ out of the way.”

The Baron’s laugh is rich and low at her glare.

“Now now, chere, You knew the price ahead of time - your truth." 

In the candlelight his eyes are mocking, challenging, and she knows she's too easy to read as he continues. 

"Ain't on my shoulders if you didn't like what you found."

It couldn't be further from the truth and they both know it but she doesn't rise to the bait. Instead, Laura rolls her eyes and holds up her hand, bones partially exposed by the open wound from Gungnir, still unhealed. 

"Whatever; your little birdy’s help just left me maimed, and I've had your help befor-" 

"An’ you fuckin’ wasted it, didn’t you?" 

Brigette's voice betrays a hint of tension and Laura watches as Samedi’s hand stills. He looks back to his consort but takes her head shake on face value. Whatever passes between them is quick and well established, and Laura feels the most ill-timed pang of jealousy at the intimacy of the moment.

She swallows and Brigette continues more calmly. 

"War's comin', tomorrow. An' you hold the pen on this story."

"What the fuck do you mean?" 

Brigette runs a hand over the rim of the claw foot tub again, looks to the walls and ceiling, out the window into the darkness of the valley. 

"This place...it's important, and if Wednesday gets his greasy mitts on it he'll draw on everything here until there's nothing left for even the dawn to call back to life."

Laura shakes her head.

"So? Kinda feeling like I've done my due diligence here."

Samedi's fingers trace eddies and whirls into the water. 

"Your boosts have worked but they've also drawn attention. Now _they_ come, far an' wide, to see if a place of power can be drained."

He stops for a moment to watch Brigette as she leans closer to Laura. 

"Some choices need to be made. Your choices."

Laura laughs and it's a flat, dead sound.

"Since when do my choices fucking matter in all of this?" 

But she knows. She can feel it, feel the impact of her actions, knows she's set something in motion and she's bound to see it through. 

Brigette lights a cigar and Laura is hit with a thrum of anticipation, clearly visible on her face as the Loa smiles at her knowingly. 

_She remembers the smoke on her face calling her dead body awake, nerves and taste buds and the heady feeling of life so close. _

It's a temptation, a taunting one. A month ago she'd thought it a cruel torture to offer feeling on a fleeting basis. Now, as her time fades to nothing, the thought of a last chance is intoxicating. Brigette blows on the end of the cigar, the embers flaring brightly. 

“The herbs are a nice touch, ain't that helpful if you can't take 'em in, let alone feel that water...I can make your last night somethin' special.”

The Loa's tone is warm as honey and full of dark things, tempting and seductive. Laura studies her and wonders whether this is another betrayal disguised as hope.

But Brigette's eyes offer no happy endings, only a deep understanding of the need of dead things to be healed, to have some semblance of dignity in the mischief and mayhem of existing.

Laura tries hard to calm herself at the temptation of feeling again, the stutter in her voice obvious and yet she doesn’t feel embarrassed. She rarely does, and even less so given she’s got an expiration date and it’s coming up so mighty fast.

“M…maybe. What’s the price this time?”

Brigette nods as Samedi sends ripples across the water again, the shifting movement having little effect on her skin but the anticipation making her swallow.

“A promise, chere. That’s the price.”

Laura should know better but she _knows_ better; last nights don’t come as often as people like to think, and she has plans for hers. Simple plans, but plans nonetheless.

Once more...with feeling. 

"This promise...what will it cost me?" 

"You."

Laura stares at Brigette's ancient eyes and knows she's telling the truth. 

She licks her lips; a last moment on earth to experience life, or something just to the left of it. No cost to anyone else (_and when the fuck did you start caring about that, Dead Wife?_), only _she_ would be forfeit.

Worth it.

There is a low drumming and humming across her skin, Samedi's swirling patterns send the water into little spirals that continue beyond the reach of physics. Brigette stands and her voice is haunting and knowing and hypnotic and Laura can feel the power of the words in her bones. 

“When the time comes, give up something, and then give up everything."

It's cryptic and clear all at once and Laura, clock counting down to when she has nothing left to give anyway, doesn't hesitate. 

"I promise."

Brigette brings the cigar to her lips, pausing only a moment to lock eyes with her husband, though the words are for Laura. 

"Remember baby…it’s always about blood.”

Brigette exhales a plume of smoke and Samedi’s grin is nothing short of wicked and Laura sinks back into the water as her body comes alive.

She hears Samedi’s voice all around her, his hands swirling and trailing up the water, ghosting over her thigh and grazing across her centre as she is overwhelmed by sensation.

“Got somethin’ else for you, way to go out swingin’, so ta speak.”

Something golden sparks behind her eyes and then the Loa are gone and she sinks under.

***

Shadow tosses.

Shadow turns.

Shadow dreams of fire and thunder.

Shadow wants to crawl out of his skin, or peel off some of it.

Shadow feels like something inside him is trying to burn away the outside layers, something piercing and bright.

Shadow feels the coming battle and wonders at his part.

***

Mr World watches his hands.

They splinter and reassemble, pixelate and return.

He turns to Tech Boy with his overlapping whispers. 

“The end is very fucking nigh. Are you present?”

The other man stares at him and sees something far older than he realised. He's been so frustrated and bored and fucking confused by the lack of change from the Old ones, with their obstient refusal to continue to develop and innovate and push forward.

He finds Mr World's intense desire for full domination grotesque but assumed, for a long time, it was necessary.

Now it seems implausibly ill-planned, an attempt to consume and decimate and ultimately maintain full control. But while innovation is necessary, it requires anomaly. The code you execute with errors is the opportunity to learn and build and discover.

Mr World, he realises, is something adaptable and visionary but old, _Old_ old..

Mr World is waiting for his response and Tech Boy nods.

“I’m here, I’m always here.”

Mr World smiles and continues to watch his hand. Unwatched by the other God, Tech Boy closes his eyes and boosts the signal even further.

***

_It’s a memory, Laura knows that._

_Or something like a memory, at least; a simulacrum drawn from memory and missed moments._

_It never happened._

_But that doesn’t stop it._

_It doesn’t stop her opening her eyes to find herself topless and ravished on a bar table in New Orleans._

_It doesn’t stop her sitting up and closing her dressing, snatching her potion from the table and slipping it into her pocket as the front bell chimes._

_It doesn’t stop her freezing as he enters the Coq Noir, striding in as if ready to start a fight with someone (or _someones_, and who the fuck knows what he was planning to say to the Loa) and then slowing and stopping at the sight of her._

_“Hey…”_

_It’s a ridiculous, slightly shy, far too awkward hey and instead of being angry she stares at him and waits. She waits and watches and drinks in the sight of him and he shuffles uncomfortably._

_“By yourself?”_

_She hadn’t seen it before, the odd combination of guilt and shyness, the reality that he was playing it cool and failing miserably. What a fucking dork._

They could have given us another place, she thinks. Somewhere with a view, a bed, somewhere special or further removed from the trauma of this scene. But it's not the first time the Loa have played their games, and she will still take this over nothing. 

She wonders if it's a gift and a punishment all at once, wonders if they're still pissed at how things went down. 

She can't blame them, she's not too happy about it either. 

_She doesn’t respond with venom now. She walks towards him slowly and tries to memorise every part of him._

_As she advances he narrows his eyes distrustingly and she wants to laugh because he’s dead, he’s fucking dead, and she’s not the one who did it but she certainly helped him point and shoot. So maybe the distrust is warranted but here, to him, she’s just a tiny little woman he fucked the night before and he’s apparently thinking she might flay him alive…_

_…or shuck his balls like peas. She pauses a moment to remember. Ok, yeah…distrust definitely warranted._

_That’s a two way street, she supposes._

_The memory is so real she can smell the smoke and sickly sweet scent of too many drinks spilt, cleaned up, and spilt again that permeates the bar. She can smell food and when she takes a step closer she can smell him, whisky and smoke and sweat and salt._

_She reaches out to lightly touch the shirt he took from the poor kid at the door, feeling denim against her fingers and the warmth of him underneath. He freezes. _

_“You’re…uh…did...sleep well?”_

_Another stupid question._

_She ignores him because he’s dead but somehow here, really here, warm to the touch and she’s finding herself fucking drunk on it. She watches her hands (whole and unmaimed) running over his buttons and across his chest, pressing her palm flat against his heart and feeling that heavy, solid thump thump thump she's used as a marker before._

_She hears him suck in air quietly and smiles. _

_She wonders if this is what would have, could have, should have happened._

_She has played this scene before and has no desire to repeat it the same way as before. _

_So she won't. _

_She begins to undo his buttons one by one and he’s stupid but not that fucking stupid, dropping his coat and watching as if he’s worried touching her will break the spell. Maybe it would have, maybe back then whatever softness she was willing to display would have hardened quickly in the wake of any reciprocation, but she is not that Laura._

_And he is that Sweeney._

_This isn’t the confident and cold departed from her dreams, nor the god-king sitting on his throne brighter than the sun and covered in woad._

_She steps forward so he's forced to step back, dropping heavily into a chair and staring up at her with dark eyes equal parts suspicious and starved. _

_This is _him_, or the memory thereof, and she smiles as she reaches up push the shirt off his shoulders, running her hands down his arms and feeling him twitch under her. _

_She stands between his legs and feels drunk on the way he stares, hungry and unwilling to risk shattering whatever insanity is leading them down this path sans vodou and Loa and the heady banda. Without excuses or lies to hide behind. _

_She touches his face, runs her fingertips over his jaw, tracing his ears, up into his hair. His eyes close for a moment and she trails her hands back down, wanting to memorise this landscape, map it with touch before that's long gone. _

_She skims his neck, her fingers tightening momentarily, his eyes snapping open as he swallows, and she knows if she wanted to she could hold him tighter and tighter and he'd love every second of it._

_But she's here to map, to explore, and she forgoes that fantasy in favour of tracing down across broad shoulders, arms thick with muscle, over warm skin and across his hands. _

_When her fingers reach his she brings up one hand and kisses his oversized palm, the tips of his fingers, watching his mouth open involuntarily as she sucks the length of one into her mouth._

_She is unable or unwilling to resist the urge to bite down gently, holding his finger between her teeth and then hard enough to break the skin. _

_He flinches and curses and she feels him hard against her leg so she repeats the action. It's enough that he cant stay passive. _

_The hand at her face wraps around her jaw and she bites at him again. _

_He quits letting her lead, gripping her wrist and hauling her into his lap. She drinks in every part of it; the stretch in her legs and the roughness of his pants against her thighs and the dull ache she’s already feeling in her stomach and the way he pulls her so tight against him it’s hard to breathe._

_"You're a fuckin' menace," he's got her hair tangled tightly in his hand and she rocks against him once, hard, and swallows his growl with her lips. _

_She wastes no time; the kiss is deep and desperate, cataloguing the taste, the feel, the heat of him. She wants it burned into whatever memory she has left and he’s clearly all too happy to oblige. He kisses her hard, messy and wild, and she answers with tongue and teeth, shifting in his lap so he’s pressed against her centre and not bothering to conceal the pleasurably pained hum that escapes her throat._

_He pulls back at that, pupils blown, and she takes the opportunity to grab the hem of her dress and pull it over her head in one fell swoop._

_He exhales sharply as he stares. _

_“Fuck.”_

_She laughs and he stands as she wraps herself around him, letting him stumble to a table as she peppers kisses along his cheekbone, his neck, biting at his ear harder than necessary and eliciting a groan in response. _

_He sets her on the nearest surface, one hand by her thigh and gripping her hair with the other, pulling her to face him. She sees it, the same searching look from the night on the astral plane, looking for any hint of uncertainty and unwillingness on her behalf. _

_She rolls her eyes and tilts her head before slapping him hard, once._

_She hasn’t read him wrong; his hands tighten around her thighs and pull them wide as he growls and lunges at her._

_He kisses her hard enough to bruise and then releases her to fall_ _back against the table, her cries shattering the quiet of the bar as he bites and kisses his way down her neck, rough hands on her breasts, teeth closing and tugging on her nipple and her fingers tangling in her hair. He reaches between them and sits up to watch her face as he strokes her core, smearing wet heat against her and holding her jaw to keep her from turning away._

_She shifts and grinds against him, crying out as he pushes two fingers inside her and his thumb keeps grazing against her clit. His grip on her jaw is iron, she can’t move, and when she crests it’s with his hand coaxing her over and his eyes drinking her down._

_As she keens against him he wraps an arm around her, cradling her head to pull her against his mouth and kissing her mouth, her jaw, leaving bite marks on her collarbones and moving further down. She struggles to catch her breath and at the first heated taste of her centre she hisses, her thighs over his shoulders and her knuckle against her lips._

_He’s patient, taking his fucking time to lave, lick, suck, bite at her until she is grinding against him and letting out a furious growl when he holds her still and smiles against her._

_She gasps out a fuck you and he chuckles, ducking the kick she aims at him and grabbing her ankle and kissing it. He is fast enough to grab her hand before it lands._

_“No fuckin’ patience.”_

_She sits up, shoots him hooded eyes and swollen lips, runs her foot up and around his back and pulls him closer to her. It’s a cheap ploy and entirely effective because the second he releases her wrist she slaps him, hard enough to make his head snap to the side, and when he hauls her up against him she tastes blood on his mouth._

_She keeps up her assault on his lips as he turns to the wall, holding her in place with his weight as he shifts his trousers and pushes into her._

_The room spins and narrows to a single focal point and her head tips back to hit the wall behind her. He waits as she adjusts and the second she moves against him he’s picking up a rhythm that makes her whimper, the grind of him against her clit and the heavy stretch inside her a pleasurable kind of torture. _

_She tightens her thighs and begins to match his pace, his hands bruising her skin and her nails scouring his shoulders. His breathing is ragged and when her hands tangle in his hair he picks up speed, grunting when she tightens her grip and swearing a blue streak when she yanks his head back._

_She keeps one arm around his shoulders for leverage and the sound of the panting breathes and hanging moans mixes with the heavy slap of body against body. _

_When she finally crashes over the edge he’s got a hand wrapped around her throat just tight enough that she squirms, the other digging fingerprints into her ass as she keens and bites her lip. _

_He gives her no time to recover, maintaining his pace and leaning back to piston harder into her, and she reaches between them to bring herself over a final time before he comes with a shattered groan against her neck._

_He stays there, thumb brushing over her jaw and his beard against her slick neck, breath hot as they struggle to come down. _

_The bar is silent but for their heavy breathing and she feels drained, sated, spent…and the grief is palpable._

_This isn't just a parting gift, this is everything that could have been, would have been, should have been. _

_She wants this again. _

_Wants him to pound into her, hard and rough enough to hurt, and then drink milkshakes in bed. Wants to see if that hulking body can fit into the bathtub and get water everywhere as she rides him. Wants to suck him off against a stolen car and steal his jacket when she gets cold. Wants to get him drunk and have him fuck her in the ass on the kitchen table and then eat fresh baked bread and drink coffee there the next morning._

_She wants to argue with him. And eat. And feel the sunshine on her skin. She wants to explore strange places and piss people off. She wants to exist. Make bread with Salim and tell more stories. Wants this man heavy on top of her, panting into her neck and then laughing as she pushes him off the bed, wants to argue with him and make a nuisance of themselves. Together. _

_She wants a future._

_She doesn’t want to die._

_The release is severe and the tears are another kind of catharsis and as her heated body is wracked with sobs he pulls back, eyes full of worry. _

_She gives him a watery smile, holds a hand against his face, right over the marks she’s left against him, presses her forehead to his and inhales before kissing him lightly. _

_“You were a truth. And I missed it." She feels no shame as her voice breaks. "I miss you.”_

_The tears keep slipping down her cheeks and he looks confused, lost, but cups her jaw with his hand and pulls her close, his lips grazing against hers before... _

_...the memory shifts and splits and then…_

in the real world her fingers skim across her nipples, the bath water warm and her limbs languid, her nerves coming alive and stinging and shivering and sighing as she brings the memory to life across her skin and spills bathwater everywhere.

She comes down slowly and cries as the water cools. 

***

Baron Samedi wraps an arm around Maman Brigette's shoulder. The heaviness in her eyes pains him and he wants his wicked woman back, but this has to be done.

“It was the best we could offer, chere. You know that.”

She nods, faraway. “I do…I know.”

They both know. They don't want the dead in pain, but they cannot change what has come, or what is coming. 

There is always a price, and to win this war, someone will have to pay.


	14. Chapter 14

Mr World pulls a body together from the sounds in the radio, solidifying in the front seat of Wednesday’s car.

“Where isss your man?”

Wednesday keeps his voice light but there is an anger in it, the kind that builds and builds and strides towards its victim and slashes them across the throat.

“Gone for a stroll, left a week ago with that fire-eyed fuckhead.”

Mr World absorbs this information and the problems it creates rapidly.

“You understand that our margin for error is exactly nil?”

Wednesday’s hand wave is airy and dismissive.

“We’ll be fine, stop worrying. You get that from your mother.”

Mr World taps at his temples and his being ripples out and back like ripples across water, splaying out and settling. Wednesday takes pity on him.

“As long as Shadow is near her, we’ll have a chance.”

“What chance?”

Wednesday smiles. “A chance that she’ll give over a piece of herself.”

Mr World lets the tension calm before he speaks again.

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Storytime is over and the solstice is upon us,” Wednesday’s voice brooks no argument. “She is bound now. If she leaves or dies, the land is open and we drain it dry. And if she stays…” his eye flashes and for a moment he is a bearded, arrogant king on the warpath.

“I tear her limb from limb until she gives me Gungnir before she watches me plunge it through her rotten heart into the earth below.”

***

_Shadow dreams._

_The strip club is loud and the lights make him squint._

_He follows the hallway, ignoring the writhing bodies and ribald calls, the fire and strange forms taken by those dancing and those watching._

_The room at the end of the hall is quieter, the music muted._

_A man sits in a chair like it’s a throne, staring at a woman onstage. He doesn’t look up but Shadow knows him immediately, hears the echo of a conversation._

“Don’t let her near him. Your wife.” He leans in the doorway, surprisingly sombre. “Don’t let her near Grimnir. Grimnir’s nothing but rot.”

Shadow polishes the spear. “Why do you even care?”

“I warned you. Let’s just leave it at that.”

_“You didn’t listen.”_

_Shadow stares at Sweeney, or whatever this thing is. He can see a face behind a face. A layered being, splintered and fractured and folded over itself like it can’t come together properly._

_“You never fuckin’ listen.”_

_Shadow shakes his head._

_“I’m not his man anymore. I’m with her, we’re going to end this.”_

_“You think so?” Sweeney doesn’t bother turning to him and Shadow feels a prick of annoyance. “Grimnir’s a poison, he’s sunk so deep into your blood you can’t tell him from you now.”_

_“I’m not helping him.”_

_“You’re so sure about that?”_

_The conversation returns and he feels ill._

“Don’t worry about me, I’m good. Wednesday even gave me his magic stick to guard.”

_Sweeney doesn’t smile, not really, but he does that head tilt that makes Shadow want to hit him._

_“There now, you see? You’re right where he wants you.”_

_Shadow grits his teeth._

_“The spear is in the hoard.”_

_Sweeney leans forward to stare at the woman on the stage with something like rapture on his face._

_“Aye, and there’s just one soul on this world who can get to it.”_

_Shadow finally turns to the woman writhing on the pole, her milky eyes fixed on the man in the chair and the ghost of a smile on her dry lips. She’s bare but for the neon lights, lined with blue woad, or autopsy scars, depending on the lighting._

_Laura._

Shadow starts awake, the echo of dreams haunting him but offering him no clarity.

When he passes the mirror in the hallway he thinks for a moment that he sees another face. He stares at Laura…or not really Laura…someone who Laura could have been in a million other lifetimes. Bright red curls and freckles for days, shooting him a cheeky smile and spinning in place.

He blinks and his own reflection stares back.

He exhales. Coffee.

_“You hear that wailing outside? Do you know what it means”_

_“People get sad at a funeral home.”_

_“Means death is coming to this house. Someone here is gonna die soon.” _

He takes his cup to the shower and stands there for a long time with the water as cold as possible, in case it helps to lessen the burning, flickering feeling inside. He opens the bathroom window to let in more cold air.

_“When the time comes…don’t get in the fucking way.”_

_“What the fuck does that even mean?”_

_“You’ll know.”_

_“Deal?”_

_“Yeah. Whatever.”_

***

_"Give up something, and then give up everything."_

The morning that the war begins the world is cold and bright.

She opens her eyes to find herself alive. 

Well, barely alive.

Well, not barely alive. 

To the left of alive. So far to the left it's basically a joke to say it. A dead kind of alive.

She opens her eyes to find herself dead, again.

She inhales the morning cold and tries to chase away the hollowed out, gaunt feeling one has after spending the night having your emotions stirred, swirled, sucked away and spat out.

It’s like death in a way, but she’s grateful for it.

As far as last nights go - and she hasn’t had many but she’s sure it’s been more than most - _that_ was something. Something clean and whole has settled in her throat, rests deeply in her chest, and suffuses her body with knowledge.

She is Laura and she wants to live.

It’s a jarring thought and it’s warring with enough other emptiness and grief that it tries to hide itself, but after 27 years unsure of it she lets the knowledge settle and harden against her bones. Maybe it’ll reinforce them enough that she gets through this on her terms.

_“When the time comes, give up something, and then give up everything.”_

She would laugh if she didn’t want to cry.

She stretches, feels where the ligament of one arm is straining and makes a note to herself to add a few more stitches along the way. She pulls on the dress she has been wearing along with her boots, takes a moment to enjoy the pleasant ringing of the coin and then shove it into her sock. She closes her eyes and pretends she doesn’t give off the odour of a graveyard (_least _you_ can’t smell your manky hide, hey?_).

She stares out the window to the little balcony and lets herself imagine, for a moment, she’s just heading down for coffee and not to an ending of sorts (_another one, hey?_).

As she passes the hallway mirror she forces herself to look.

Milky eyes nearly completely covered blink slowly. She looks haunted, lost, nightmare driven. Her hair is lank and greasy despite her attempts to maintain it, her skin grey and mottling in places. The autopsy seams and stitches holding her together are strained; she’s almost positive any semblance of connective tissue is on its last legs.

Dying today might not be such a bad idea.

She blinks and suddenly she sees Essie’s face full of mischief and life, freckled skin and smile full of hope. She blinks again and sees herself alive, glowing, bright and glorious with shiny hair and clear skin free of seams.

She blinks again and she’s back. She’s her. She’s a dead thing.

“Cute.” She’s not sure when she started talking to the house, or when she started feeling as if the house was talking back.

She finds Bilquis in her kitchen sipping tea and can’t really summon more than a mild annoyance.

“What is it about this place that makes gods think they can enter without knocking?”

Bilquis smiles.

“This is a place of power. A window to the imminent.”

Laura doesn’t bother to pour herself a coffee, knows Brigette’s herbs have faded faster than last time as the magic in her blood lessens by the second.

“Sure. And that means manners are unnecessary because…”

She stares at the goddess who says nothing but looks amused at her whining. A thought pricks at her and Laura narrows her eyes, finding herself unable to control the anger in her voice.

“You knew...knew what the Morrigan was planning, knew how it would break me.”

Bilquis does not mince words.

“Yes.”

Laura rounds the table and stares at the woman in front of her.

“Salim? Did you have him sent here to encourage me?"

"Yes."

"And Nancy? Making me tell those stupid stories like some kind of fucking therapy? “

“Yes.”

“Fuck you.”

"Be careful, girl." She spins to find Nancy at the other end of the table, paper in his lap like he owns the fucking place. “Wouldn’t wanna be rude to a guest now, would you?”

Laura feels her autopsy scars slipping open. She can feel maggots writhing, feel the sluggish hardening of her veins. She can feel the magic waning. She doesn’t have time for this.

She doesn’t hide the sneer in her tone, leans right into the moment of bitchiness like it’s a balm.

"Forgive me if I'm distracted."

Bilquis smiles and sips her tea while Nancy speaks, not looking away from the paper. 

“Stories are not stupid. They have merit, value, necessity. They are the arts and culture, social satire to keep power in check, tragedies honoured and passed on as reminders, beauty so ethereal and temporal it can barely exist without another medium."

As he finishes his little speech Bilquis smiles, her voice much calmer than Nancy’s intensity.

“The world is on fire and humanity is in agony and still you paint, you write, you film, you sing. Still you dance. And still there are stories. Nothing speaks more of hope than the telling of stories.”

Laura rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, and it’s all about the hope, right? You all getting a boost from believers has nothing to do with it?”

Nancy’s laugh is sharp.

“For someone who wants Wednesday’s little plot foiled you sure are pissy about how it gets done.”

He drops the papers on the table and she reads ‘**Sudden Interest in Mythology Sparks Religious Debate**’ on one, ‘**New Discussions of Deities Reap Viral Rewards**’ before another paper is dropped over the top, ‘**American Gods:** **Country Enthralled by Legends, Myths, and Fairy Tales**’.

Nancy sucks his teeth.

“Fuckin’ fairy tales; like we’re all fuckin’ winged Tinkerbells.”

Still, he’s smiling, and he’s more solid, more tangled and webbed and bright than ever before. Like pure cordial.

Laura feels the stitches holding her arm on loosening slightly. 

"I don't have time for this."

"Where else would you be?" 

She doesn't have an answer for that and Bilquis stands, moving to her side. 

"You have been sharing _his_ story...you should see it, feel it."

Bilquis kisses like she invented it and Laura thinks that if her heart were ever going to beat again it would be now and then suddenly 

_She sees him in a prison, smiling to himself as Essie chatters about America. _

_She sees him somewhere back, way back, a heavy crown on his head as he kisses the stomach of a woman with long curly hair and a dress the colour of gold. _

_And then all the way back, to the beginning, she watches a God-king leap through the air covered in blue woad and defeat a monster in battle. _

She grips the table as she returns, so fucking sick and tired of being shown things she has no way to process and more than a little ill at the lurching shift in her perspective.

“Stop…stop doing that to me.”

“Would you like to see a part of your story?”

She doesn't get to respond, only aware enough to note Nancy’s laughter as she shifts again. 

_She's on the side of the road. _

_No._

_She's scattered _across_ the road. _

_A furious man is screaming his defiance into the sky, and though she doesn't recognise the words, she can recognise the pain in them. _

_She watches him gather and hastily push organs back into her, watches him give his coin a final look, and places it on her sternum, letting his finger rest gently against the bone as it sinks into her, as if to make sure it takes its journey as promised. _

_She watches him ask a favour from the Loa, to get her back to her husband, pain on his face and desire in his eyes. _

_She watches him taunted by Brigette, too far gone on the dead girl, sees him spurred into action with violence to overcome the truth of it all. _

_She watches his face in a smoky, wild medley of feeling as he finds her in his lap and stares with shock, heat, desire. Waits for her to move. _

_She's watching him, standing taller and looking older than she's ever seen him as he warns Shadow (keep him away from her)._

She had thought she was wrung out but this is something else. She gasps as a reflux, unnecessary but reassuring.

"Why are you showing me this?" 

Bilquis leans close and her eyes beg Laura to understand.

"To read between the lines you need to know all the lines…and sometimes we don't get to see the best parts of our story until it's too late."

Laura coughs up congealed blood. 

"I think it's a bit late."

Bilquis tilts her head but before she can say anything the entire house is rocked by a wave of power and the building storm. 

***

Wednesday inhales deeply.

"It's a beautiful day for a battle."

He’s not wrong.

Although the air is cold, and the sunshine is being slowly stolen away by a storm cloud, it is a stunning day in a beautiful place. He leans on the gate and smiles.

The Morrigan, standing in front of the house and looking over the edge of the valley, doesn’t bother to turn.

“You knew the girl would be able to pull the spear.”

“Of course, my dears.”

She splinters into three and pulls herself back together, her entire being shifting from a proud queen to a leather clad warrior, chest bared and markings ablaze. When she finally addresses him there is steel in her voice.

“You will not take this land from us, Grimnir.”

He gestures at the emptiness between them.

“And who, pray tell, is _us_?” He smiles at her sorrowfully. “Who is left to hold your vigil, Morrígu? Who is here to protect your sovereignty with you?”

She feels the storm in the air beginning to build and closes her eyes before opening them with a smile.

She is not alone.

Brigette’s skirts whip in the wind. She is glorious, green eyes flashing and rooster feathers against her throat.

To her right, just behind her, Baron Samedi holds his cane and his silence.

The breeze is becoming stronger and the sun is leaving the valley.

Wednesday smiles charmingly, bowing low.

“Maman, such a pleasure." His tone in congenial. "You know as well as I do that this hasn’t been your calling for some time.”

Her voice is sharp and mocking. 

“You plannin’ to stop at just one pantheon? Think you’ll have enough then?” She shakes her head. “Ain’t gonna let you take my roots, no matter how far from them I walked. That ain’t your story to consume and spit out.”

Wednesday addresses the Baron. “I have no trouble with the death Loa, only the utmost respect for your kind.”

Samedi’s eyes flicker as something dark and terrible takes shape behind them.

“Bouch ou pale manti. Your quarrel is with all, power sought at too great a scale. Sispann pale kaka.”

The storm compounds on itself and Wednesday waves his hand.

“This is it, then. The armada?”

The Morrigan stands tall. “There are plenty who won’t stand for this, Grimnir; you best give up while you can.”

He laughs at the Morrigan’s words before settling. “Terribly sorry, my dear, but you are grossly underestimating my support base.”

The air around them flickers, twitches. Energy crackles as multiple goons and spooks slip into being, amorphously human before becoming clothed and faceless mechanisms.

Digitally enhanced laughter pierces the air as New Media appears, millions of followers richer and all too well aware of the marketing opportunities available when there are less competitors to challenge her platforms.

She brings with her a horde of mindless drones, literally, zooming them down to lay down fire over the deities assembled. It's a moment that could, should, end in horror but for a traitor in their midst. 

The drones freeze, flicker, and New Media howls with rage.

Tech Boy pulls together next to an unimpressed Mr Nancy and Wednesday sneers at him. 

“So quick to abandon the future?”

Tech Boy grins and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Just looking out for my new besties.”

Nancy leans away. “Step the fuck back you gamer gate piece of shit.”

When gods assemble so too do egos and nonsense. The sniping could continue for some time, but the solstice is upon us, and so these grounds are waking.

In the moments before the storm breaks we can take a time to consider the valley. It’s wide and open, flush and soon to be flusher with flowers, and deities, spirits, mystical and magical assembling. There is a building of tension, as always, in storms and battles alike. It becomes apparent that these grounds are not here, nor there. They are existing separate to, and embedded in, aspects of reality.

They’re not necessarily elsewhere, but their layers are varied, and as the solstice opens the realms this one would be akin to going behind the curtain at the theatre.

Which is why, as our armies assemble, their forms are so varied, so vast.

As the Great White Buffalo saunters to the field so too do we see Czernobog and his mighty hammer, the rage of betrayal and drive for vengeance reddening his sallow skin. Somewhere the figure of Iktomi stretches his legs over branches only to be knocked away by Ostara’s heady blooms.

The trees surrounding the valley sway and rock as the wind builds and if one were to stand back (as one would be advised to do), it would seem as if the valley were becoming a pool of fire and steel and magic pouring down from the house above.

Wednesday can feel the building and shifting and smiles, closing his eyes.

“You underestimate her.”

He finds Brigette in front of him. Her beautiful eyes are deeply sunken behind a skeletal mask, the smile she shoots him is full of ghosts, her voice like graveyard dirt.

“She will stop you.”

He growls then, the veneer of civility peeling away, and the storm crescendos with his howl of building fury.

“I am sick to fucking death of hearing about Laura FUCKING MOON.”

He steps inside the gate, the storm clouds break open and just like that, the war begins.

***

When she recovers from the first blast Bilquis and Nancy are nowhere to be found, and Laura runs outside to locate the source.

She stares at the empty valley below.

She knows, or thinks she knows, that something is happening down there. 

But all she sees is the sunrise over a valley full of flowers.

She stares at nothing, confusion settling over her as Shadow, Salim, and the Jinn run out behind her.

“What the fuck is happening?”

Shadow peers down, the light around him flickering and crackling like it doesn’t know how to settle.

“Nothing…an earthquake?”

The Jinn shakes his head. “It is begun. The battle has commenced.”

Realisation dawns on Shadow’s face. “The Backstage.”

A memory flickers.

_“It's a little bit like the backstage. But a lot smaller. It's a place I can hide things.”_

“What the fuck is Backstage?”

“It’s the whole reason he wants this place; something about the land being soaked in belief, a point of power. He said…Backstage is like being behind the scenes at the theatre.”

As Shadow speaks his hands begin to shake and the pillar of light she’s seen for so long now is flickering and shaking like a reactor becoming completely unstable and then suddenly he’s gone.

“Shadow? SHADOW?”

The Jinn turns to Salim.

“Stay in the house.”

And before Salim can respond or Laura can ask him what exactly the fuck he thinks he’s doing, the Jinn also disappears.

She and Salim stare at one another and he sucks his teeth in a rare display of anger.

“Fuck."

The laugh that springs from her is bright and slightly too sharp, manic even, and then another blast makes their ears ring. She grabs his hand and hauls him to her.

“Inside, now!”

The door seems to open of its own volition, warmth and safety inside, and it slams behind them with a crash.

It is a strange thing to know something wild is happening in a space you occupy and yet have no ability to see or reach. For all her otherworldliness she’s well aware they won’t be crossing to see it, and Salim swallows heavily.

“What…what should we do?”

She shakes her head. How would she know? Why would she know? So far her insane plans have led to a God wanting her to access a dead man’s hoard, a goddess making her a pawn in a game of first to the prize, a storytelling exercise that seems to have boosted a bunch of cruel, selfish deities enough to fight a land battle, a Loa giving her a send-off fitting for someone about to die a horrible death, and a love goddess’ cryptic crosswords leaving her hurt and reeling all at once.

She tries to clear her head enough to think.

Wednesday wants the spear. He fears the spear. He needs her to get the spear. If she dies before getting it he loses it forever to the sun's treasure. If she dies before stopping him whatever protection she gives the land dies with her. 

Her best bet is to have the spear ready to go and protect them both, go down swinging.

She swallows. Fuck it.

She reaches out her hand and tries to access that dragging pull, but the ozone in the air and the distraction of power blasts that she can neither see nor understand make it hard to keep her focus.

Another unseen blast from an unseen source rocks them and she feels a warm hand clasp hers. She smiles at Salim because if she can’t pull this off at least she has been able to know him.

He squeezes her hand. 

"Fuck those assholes."

She smiles, hugs him once, fiercely, before stepping back and nodding. 

"Fuck those assholes."

“Oh, come on now; we were all getting along so well.”

They both spin to see Wednesday standing in the doorway, a rip in reality behind him and his eye on fire. A boom of thunder rocks the foundations of the house and the wind is cursing wildly against the windows.

Laura can’t help herself.

“You need to get in, don’t you? Big Bad Wolf and all that.”

He narrows his eye. “My dear you know perfectly well that I can huff and puff.”

She stands, moving slowly in front of Salim, feeling the coin in her boot and refusing to back down.

“How much does it piss you off knowing you can’t kill me?”

He doesn’t stop smiling but she sees war in his countenance.

“All the better to see you dead, my dear.”

"Dead means no spear."

"Dead means no land."

They stare at one another and she can see how much he hates her. Can see the rage at her refusal to just _fucking_ die already. 

"If you won't bring it to me I can always just wait until you finally fall to pieces. Looks like you won't have long, that meat sack has seen better days."

She smiles sweetly, ignores a fly landing on her eyelid. 

“Sure, but I’m still prettier than you.”

He nods. “Of course, if one was into that kind of thing. But we have run out of time, my dear, and if you won’t give it willingly, perhaps I can convince you.”

Lightning scorches across the front yard and they are thrown from the house, and Laura watches in horror as Salim is propelled by an energy blast to the farthest tree by the gate.

“No!”

Before Wednesday can collect his prize, though, he is tackled hard. Laura stares at Shadow, at the wild and fluctuating pillar of light that comprises him, as he stands over Wednesday.

“Stay down.”

Wednesday adjusts his scarf.

“Shadow Moon, you and I both know that won’t be happening.”

Shadow swings wildly and Wednesday goes flying but Laura knows. Wednesday will recover too quickly from whatever Shadow is doling out, and he’s too erratic, too wavering. Like he needs to be grounded somehow.

Shadow hauls himself back up, the light inside him so blinding and pure she is unsure as to how any earthly body can hold onto it, even with what seem to be other worldly genes.

Another blast rocks the house and they are thrown out past the porch.

She ducks another wave of energy, the rain like splinters than don’t bother her but must be hurting Salim terribly. He’s not moving from where he has landed, and her heart is sinking fast.

_Give up something._

She can’t get to him without drawing Wednesday’s attention and Shadow won’t be able to hold him off much longer.

“Fuck.”

_Give up something._

If she leaves Salim where he is, Wednesday won’t see her. She’ll be able to hide away and try again to pull that horrible spear, see if she can rely on distraction to hit him with it in the back. It won’t be as good as the chest, she won’t get to see the life leaving his eyes, but he would be gone and so would she.

But so would Salim.

_Give up something._

It’s unacceptable and when she shifts she feels the answer pressing itself into her ankle.

Of-fucking-course. 

She groans and plunges her hand into her boot to pull out the coin. The light chiming is still going, the same that has carried her through so much, and she savours the last few seconds of strength.

She watches Shadow’s light flicker erratically, thinks of all that time following his light as if it held the answers for her heart and knows; it was never about her at all. Death let her see more, but that had always been there.

Not a mark of true love, but the mark of something more. Something that needs a boost before it burns him out.

_Give up something._

She sees her opening when Wednesday is briefly distracted by a hit from Shadow that sends him flying, though she wonders for a moment why the Old God is resorting to physical contest. Wednesday is knocked down the hill and into the valley, Shadow learning heavily against the side of the house.

She races to his side. He’s hurt but still going, though the wind has been knocked out of him and under that wild, flickering light he’s looking tired. 

“We need time, Shadow. Salim needs time, and I can’t get the spear without it.”

He nods, struggling to stand, and she makes her first choice.

She shoves the coin into his hands and sees his eyes widen, sees his wounds close, and feels a part of her begin to crumble. He stares at the coin as it connects with whatever battle is being fought within him and provides a base to stabilise against, a bit of luck to balance him out. She watches as his light shrinks and solidifies to a single, unflickering person comprised of such purity it makes her want to cry.

She smiles at him.

“You can do this.”

And with that she bolts up the hill to find Salim, leaving Shadow to face Wednesday.


	15. Chapter 15

The Baron stares as the battle rages and wishes he was home in the heat, the sweat, the spice and the rum.

"Ours ain't meant for war; we can defend, collect the dead, but this is somethin' else."

Brigette nods. "So many holdin' the line but ain't many with strength enough to hold it."

"Best hope our girl can do this."

"She will." Brigette lights her cigar. "That's what I'm afraid of."

***

Laura finds Salim, unconscious but alive on the front lawn. His breathing is shallow but it's there, though his arm is at a horrific angle and he has a gash on his forehead leaking blood.

When she hears someone behind her she rounds quickly, barking out her order. 

"Get him out of here."

The Jinn stares at her from behind dark glasses, one arm bleeding profusely and his sunglasses long gone. She feels something hot and angry twisting as he shakes his head. 

He’s struggling.

"My defiance has already cost me - I am part of this now, I owe this war."

_“I owe a battle.”_

It’s the exact wrong thing to say and she lets the anger take over her.

She strides towards him, unsurprised when he doesn't step back but enjoying a brief thrill as his mouth opens on shock when she clamps her hand around his balls and twists, hard. She clamps with everything she has, no longer coin powered but with the element of surprise to make him freeze and then she releases him in a heap.

"You owe him better than this and you fucking know it."

His expression isn't nearly as much fun as Sweeney's had been but then she doubts he's usually on the receiving end of dominance and the thought makes her smile coldly. 

He glares at her from the ground, his voice ragged. "Wednesday will-" 

"I will distract Wednesday but if you don't get Salim out of here I swear on this house that I will find you and take the genie out of your bottle forever."

"Fuck you."

"Get. Him. Out."

He pulls himself up, standing as tall as possible with his hands to his crotch. 

Her voice softens.

"Wednesday owns people, that's what he does. That's how he operates. Just chess pieces on this board. There's no shame is refusing to play the game."

She takes a step closer and he refuses to flinch. 

"I will not run from him. I am no coward – I need to help end this."

They stare at each other and she sees so much anger there, untempered by guilt. He is chaotic but he can't stop staring at Salim's figure. The last time she'd called someone a coward it had been in defence; the hurt, the feeling of betrayal meant she needed a weapon. 

This time she makes a different choice. 

"It’s not cowardly to protect something that gives you strength, someone precious to you. You owe him before anyone else, I think you know that. "

The Jinn stares at her a moment longer before getting up, hauling Salim over his shoulder, and walking away.

The voice behind her is breathless and confused. 

"You know we needed him, right?" 

She shakes her head and turns to Shadow.

"Salim needs him more. And I need Salim to be OK if I’m going to pull this fucking spear."

“Laura, about that, what happens if you-“

"You’re glowing way more solidly now."

She peers at him and he raises his hands. 

"Yeah it...uh, won't stop."

She blinks.

"You can see that now?" 

She shakes her head, she doesn't have time for this. She cracks her neck, feeling her body clinging to the last of the magic in her veins and the resources of the coin draining quickly without it there to boost her further.

"You have to keep Wednesday distracted and I need to play least in sight. Hold onto that coin and let’s go."

She takes a step but is thrown backwards by a wave of energy and gust of wind that slams her into the tree as Shadow bolts down the hill.

***

Wednesday greets him with open arms and a warm smile.

“My boy, there you are!”

Shadow goes to swing but Wednesday is faster.

“Ah ha, now now, no need to be rough with me when I can make all this go away.” The carnage around them rages and Shadow barely holds his fist back. It’s enough though, and Wednesday speaks quickly.

“You get her to bring me Gungnir and I’ll release you from your oaths.”

Shadow shakes his head. “Not going to happen.”

Wednesday ignores the battles around them.

“Don’t be stupid, Shadow! Your wife died with another man’s cock in her-“

“You need a new song, that one’s been sung.”

The words come out before he can really think about them, fuelled by late night conversations and really seeing someone for who they are.

_"Now I just want something. Magic, gods, power...I don't care what. But for a little while I felt that hope thing and I want that for other people."_

“Laura’s done more in the last two weeks to bring hope to a bunch of kids than I’ve seen any one of you deities do. I’ll take that over petty power plays any day.”

Something inside him solidifies even further, a clinking together of pieces in recognition of truth. Shadow smiles as he feels himself becoming whole, becoming complete, and becoming more.

“You can’t deny who you are, Shadow, you can't deny whose blood runs in your veins.”

He turns to Wednesday with eyes of fire and such brightness and purity emanating from his being that it casts away the shadows creeping through the farthest crevices of the valley.

***

From the base of the tree where the blast sent her Laura feels her chest burst open as her autopsy seams split, rotten muscle slipping to the ground but her bones holding for now. She stares into the valley below where Wednesday nods to her and smiles before turning back to dispatching a blow from Shadow. He’s having to work hard against the man made of light but he’s holding his own, and as she stares below her it seems like he’s not the only one.

Reality has been ripped, torn, and the Backstage is bleeding through. Like snippets of scene cut over other images it appears, deities and gods in battle.

She sees Mama-ji, glorious as Smashina Kali, laying waste to an army of Mr World’s faceless replicants done in the blandest, most globally beige image imaginable. Anansi and the Egyptians are facing off and she sees them shouting at one another, his heat pricking off something defensive in Mr Ibis, whose arms are looking an awful lot like wings.

The field itself seems alive, twisting and shaping as Ostara moves while Czernobog sends hammer and death in her direction. The Morrigan battles Freki and Geri, shifting to avoid their attacks and calling the earth to rise over them.

The Old Gods are fighting with everything they have. 

And they’re losing.

She can see it writ large.

The longevity and return to power of the ancient beings is being overwhelmed, still, by the reach and spread of New Gods.

Even the Morrigan, stronger than ever in this place of Celtic power, is being kept at bay by an increasingly huge pair of wolves. New Media’s cackling whoop and occasional whine of pain clash horrifically with Tech Boy’s shouts as they seize control of networks, followers and strength against code and creation.

Not all gods are battle creations, and never has this been more apparent then now. War gods facing off against those who are meant to shepherd in spring, or guard the hearth, or heal. Even Shadow, strengthened and charged by whatever lays inside him and the luckiest of lucky coins won’t be able to hold them all off for long.

Those gods who are blocking Wednesday's path won't hold long - once he has Gungnir and can enter the house that belief will splinter and shatter and then all this will have been pointless. 

She'll be gone and he'll be everything. 

She stares at the house a moment, swears it is giving off a faint glow, watches as the windows seem to darker and brighten as the thunder crashes. On the front porch she sees the empty bowl Salim uses to set out milk and wants to scream, furious and so lost.

She's strong but barely held together, one arm close to coming off, her mangled hand held together with sinew. She can go out swinging, but each swing will leave her less capable of taking the next one. 

If Wednesday gets to her he will find a way to take the spear.

If she dies first there will be no one connected to this house to hold the power in place.

She has never felt so angry or impotent.

They need a miracle.

To her right she smells incense and sandalwood and the heat of far off places.

She turns to Bilquis, wondering where the fuck the goddess has been all this time, and doesn’t bother to keep the rage from her voice, shouting over the howling storm. 

"So what now? What happens in the story now? I did all this and it was all for fucking nothing?" 

Bilquis is not perturbed by her heat or rage.

"Your leprechaun - you didn't want to say goodbye. Why?" 

They don't have time for this, she needs to think of something. 

Bilquis steps back as a rogue blade flies past her, undeterred by Laura’s lack of response.

"Was it because you thought he loved you? Were you angry that he went before you could find out?" 

Laura inhales and starts marching back to the valley but Bilquis' voice carries clearly despite the wind and rain.

"Until you _have_ everything you cannot give it up. Answer the question."

Laura closes her eyes for a moment and exhales. 

_Give up everything._

She thinks of the book, Mr Ibis' words, Salim telling her about the night Sweeney had his final battle. Loss and guilt and shifting sands until he'd know only a few things (being a leprechaun, owing Wednesday, owing a battle) and even those truths were up for debate. The little snippets in between (_I was a king once_), the hints of else, shifting smoke wisps in a mind long without linear connections.

And her, straight forward and full of snark and sarcasm and something he could respond to, understand, connect with because he knew the steps to her dance and liked them. 

He knew she was lost too but was angry at her for it, demanding she be accountable, pushing her to keep going when it would have been easier to lie in the field. 

Was it love? Was it something that could have been love? What did he actually feel for her? 

She turns and shakes her head. 

"Maybe he didn't, maybe he couldn't..."

She gnaws at her lip and Bilquis steps closer, unfazed by the violence or the rain whipping across her face. She is beautiful, clear and strong, the fire in her eyes only highlighting a force much, much greater than humans are capable of knowing.

"...but, for you, it felt like he did?"

Laura is so tired and can't run any more. 

She cracks herself open and lets the truth come out and it feels like dying all over again. 

"Yeah, that night at New Orleans...I felt like he did."

She is flooded with grief but Bilquis' smile is a sparkling, hypnotic thing and the joy in it is genuine. 

"Then you must take your potion."

The bottle appears in Bilquis' hand and Laura wants to scream. 

"Are you fucking kidding me right now?” She finally screams out her anger. “His body is gone, the blood on the spear is useless even if I _could _pull it through without burning out, and nobody else is exactly banging down my door with confessions like that!"

"You are so sure the blood must come from another?" 

An explosion of power hits trees below and rocks the ground and Laura does not have fucking time for this, shouting and ducking as another of New Media’s missiles skim low and are redirected by an increasingly exhausted Tech Boy. 

"Well where else would it come from?" 

Bilquis' smile is serene, amused, so out of place here that it seems almost comical.

She is watching Laura’s movements closely.

So closely.

Anticipatory. 

Laura freezes, feeling ill. 

The world lurches beneath her feet, the maggots writhe, and her blood moves sluggishly through her veins nearly turned to stone.

_He’d watched her with cautious, worried eyes as she struggled to lift the car and hurls maggots onto the road. _She had felt seen and she hated it. 

_He’d taken her through the hoard and she had felt safe in his arms, later realising how private and precious a journey it had been. _She had felt grateful and she didn't mind it.

_He’d seen her break and bruise and bloody the people on the train and grinned, revelling in her strength, enjoying the thrill of violence. _She had felt powerful and he'd exalted in it.

_She had traded Baron Samedi her truth only to find herself wrapped up in _him_, shocked and charged with electric contact. _She had given herself over to it.

_He had been hurt at her words, her accusations, the path he'd walked on his last night on earth. _She had felt betrayed so deeply it could only come from a place of trust, and she had run from it.

_Last night in a reimagined memory, his eyes and hands and mouth, the feeling of being whole and sated and wanting him, wanting a future, wanting that warmth and passion and venom all at once. _She had replayed the scene, and righted it.

_Essie's memories and this place and learning about his world and sharing the story with children and seeing him in her dreams again and again, little pieces clicking into place until something seemed close to whole. _She had learned, and wanted to learn more.

_Remember, baby, it’s always about the blood._

There it was.

Somewhere in between it all, between the insults and the fear and the fights and the refusal to properly examine or process or deal with all the trauma and connection and the genuine flush of pleasure she felt at their sparring...she had seen. 

She had seen him and _seen_ him, before and after death, and now she knows.

She doesn’t need _his_ blood. 

She just needs blood infused with love.

She holds up her mangled, foul hand with its cauterised wound and exposed bone. A tiny trickle of sluggish blood edges from the corner, blood so far from fresh but not so close to dead as to be useless.

Blood just to the left of alive.

She has everything she needs.

She stares at Bilquis, goddess of love and player of a much longer game than any of them had realised, and she swallows.

Her eyes stay dry and it's so painful she could gasp, the sensation of tears needing to pour down but completely stoppered a unique kind of agony. The rain takes mercy on her, picking up and splattering her face. 

She doesn’t hesitate, not any more, scooping up a fallen blade and drawing the across her palm before squeezing two drops of her blood into the vial in front of her. 

Le vrai sangue de l'amour, sluggish and congealed though it may be, is freely given and full of love. 

The potion crackles, sizzles as if relieved at the final addition to its chemical composition, and she stares at it for a moment as it turns a bright, brilliant red. 

_What you need, Dead Wife, is a resurrection. _

Liquid resurrection, ready for consumption. 

It’s like a punch in the gut, like the earth dropping out from under her, like a howl in the night full of rage and pain that she’s only just hearing. She thinks of Brigette’s ancient eyes and the Baron’s sombre face and the grief builds and shifts so big and heavy she can barely contain it.

_Give up everything._

Laura stares at the liquid and sees a future.

A life far away from all this, maybe a different country, somewhere no deity knows her name. A quiet life in a house with a porch and the sea nearby, simple food and sunshine. Someone to fall in love with and to love back.

She thinks about happy little faces and what it means to connect to something bigger, something magical. She thinks of what happens when someone has a monopoly on faith. 

She thinks about Salim and his open, vulnerable heart. She thinks about sand between her toes and sex and food and drink and being nourished and everything she's taken for granted the last 27 years and wanted desperately the last few weeks.

_Give up everything._

She closes her eyes and sees a chair that looks like a throne bathed in blue neon light.

Bilquis seems to read her mind. 

“You will not drink?"

The question is asking for confirmation more than expressing surprise, and Laura would be hurt at the expectation if this wasn’t the latest in her long line of being part of a story to serve the plot but not ending.

When her eyes open, milky and tired, Laura doesn’t look away from the sparking, hissing, brilliantly bright mixture in the bottle. The plan, clear and whole, forms in her mind and she is ready. She doesn’t look away from her future.

_Give up everything._

She doesn’t shy away from this choice, shaking her head in response to Bilquis.

“We don’t need a reanimated corpse to defeat Odin.” 

She pours the potion into the bowl and sets it below the window on the front porch.

_Give up everything._

She stares at it for a moment before turning and heading towards the battle as she throws the words over her shoulder and into the building, howling wind.

“We need a god.”


	16. Chapter 16

“It’s time to remember now.” 

_ He hates it here. _

_ The music is shite and the drinks taste like piss. _

_ The woman in front of him writhes and the neon lights cast shadows over her skin, shifting to reveal blue lines that look like autopsy scars. _

_ She regards him with milky eyes and smiles. _

_ His head hurts. _

_ He feels himself splintering and the pieces of his mind shift, disconnect, slip over one another like cards being shuffled. He feels himself projected out, slices of myth and mayhem and magic no longer accessible are suddenly at his fingertips, then gone again before he can identify the memory. _

_ His drink becomes a bowl of milk, a loaf of bread, an apple freshly picked and red as blood. _

_ He knows who he is. _

_ His cigarette becomes a spear, his chair a throne, the weight on his shoulders a golden crown. _

_ He has no idea who he is. _

_ Soon, when she slips into his lap, when his hands finally run over cold dead flesh and the sound of her cries compete with the music, he’ll hope that maybe this time it will continue. His mind will feel as if those shattered shards are drawing together, forming something that could be considered close to whole, the nearer he gets to her, the more of her he touches and tastes. _

_Those splintered pieces will briefly move into place, tantalisingly close, and he'll think for a second that the mirror will reform and he'll see himself, his reflection complete. _

_ He’ll feel himself whole, for a single sunlit moment, glowing and glorious with her in his arms. _

_ But then the dance will begin again. _

_ She will shift, his cigarette will become unlit, his drink will refill, the song will start again. _

_His beautiful Eorann will appear and he’ll have no chance to run a hand over her pretty golden dress, he’ll get to see Essie spinning wildly, and then she’ll be back. _

_ Bathed in blue light, the neon turning her skin from grey and dead to luminescent white, like she’s been drenched in the moon, like she’s been stripped of any earthly chains. _

_ He will shatter and reform and lose and gain on repeat on repeat on fucking repeat. _

_ And he’ll wait._

_Things are always the same in this endless loop. Rinse, repeat. _

_ Apart from a few strange moments where reality has splintered and he’s thought she was really there, or Grimnir’s odious rot permeated the room, and even Shadow fucking Moon had come for a chat, things are always the same. _

_ Another man’s dead wife writhes on her back before shifting to all fours and crawling towards him. _

_ He fucking hates it here. _

_ He sips his drink and sets it down slowly as she shoots him a milky-eyed, mocking smile. A memory shard slips into place as he leans forward, knowing what’s to come, wondering if this time the scene will play on and he’ll taste her again, for real. The hope tastes like cigarettes and vomit. _

_ He won’t, she’ll slip away, run away, fall away home. _

_ He fucking hates it here. _

_ She pulls up to her knees, coils over him, placing her hands on either side of her head and lift her hair. She runs her hands down over her collarbones and breasts. _

_ Still, the view’s good. _

_ He holds out his coin, as he always does. _

_ She writhes closer to him, hands resting either side of the armrest, and opens her mouth. _

_ She is gone. _

_ The music cuts. _

_ The lights dim. _

_ He blinks and for a moment his vision swims bloody red, bright and sizzling brilliance infusing every part of him. _

_ “What the fu-” _


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the super short previous chap.
> 
> No real excuse I'm just a dickhead. Hopefully this helps. 
> 
> HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Laura strides down the hill and ignores the growing tiredness in her limbs as her body decays so quickly she can feel it closing off around her. She stumbles as an ankle joint loosens but manages to keep herself from falling.

She straightens, pulls her shoulders back, pushes herself forward.

She can do this.

Below the battles wink in and out of existence, too many gods and deities struggling with too great a number of faceless hordes and consumer driven masses.

Shadow, resplendent and whole, is thrown across the field by a blast of thunder and when Wednesday turns to her his smile is full of malice. 

“Mrs Moon, so very kind of you to join us." His voice is a mocking call that carries over the valley." Oh but you do look rough, my dear, all that juice is running out.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re really, really fucking boring?”

She can do this.

Laura reaches a hand beside her and tries to picture it, pull from the memory she’d been given by Salim, pours everything into calling it from the hoard. No matter how she tries she can’t seem to locate Gungnir. She’s unsure if it’s fear or hesitation or just plain distraction as maddening god shit spins on around her, and she struggles to remain calm as lightning shatters across the valley.

She is thrown backwards as Mr World materialises from the ether, hundreds more beige non-entities appearing dressed as an endless crew of polished airline staff.

Laura exhales as the exhaustion in her muscles begins to slow her movements, pulling herself upright and dusting off her dress. She tries to hide the shaking in her hands but Mr World’s eyes, shifting wildly as if trying to hold shape, narrow in on her.

“You are lossssing.”

“Fuck off.”

Wednesday laughs and it’s so charming, the riotous laughter of a kindly uncle at a family gathering, that she wishes she could block her ears. She can see Shadow pulling himself up across the valley, the reality rips still showing segments of battle. She sees Nancy’s many limbs lurching towards a glorious bird in battle and a black dog watching without participation.

She sees the Morrigan holding up Geri’s head only to spin and duck as New Media’s serpentine connective arms stretch themselves skywards.

And then she sees them there, all mortality on display as the battle picks up and ceases is strange, rapid bursts, and as the storm seems to close over one spot in the valley.

Wednesday is waiting for her to step closer and she stares at this man who has cost her so much and thrown so very many aside. She has been selfish, indifferent, lied to herself and others for ease and comfort. But this willingness to use and dispose, this cruelty that gives back nothing, to be something so powerful and provide nothing to those from whom you draw power…

She despises him.

He smiles. He knows.

She needs something to help her, some weapon to protect herself with long enough that she can find that hateful fucking spear. Something to hold him off with.

A memory pricks at her and she reaches for the first thing that comes to her head. She finds this much faster, holds it in her mind, and that dragging, sucking vacuum at her hand tells her she’s done it.

Wednesday sneers but his eyes widen.

This spear does not burn her.

Its weight is heavy but comforting.

The spear that is not Gungnir is warm, not hot, and she is grateful for the last skerrick of strength in her veins to let her hold it upright. She has zero idea how to wield an object twice as tall as her, but Wednesday’s face is satisfyingly infuriated, and in her last moments perhaps that’s the best she can hope for.

“Time’s running out, you one-eyed fuck.”

He sneers. “You’ll burn out before I do.”

She sees Nancy to her left.

“What is the plan here, girl? Poke him?”

She mutters. “Would you hold him still?”

His chuckle is genuinely amused but he shakes his head. “You are sorely mistaking the nature of our battle here.”

She nods.

“If I go…

“_When_ you go.”

She grits her teeth. “Look out for Shadow.”

Nancy watches her for a moment and there’s a glint in his eyes close to respect, his voice dropping to something more serious, deep and rich.

“You have my word.”

“You know, I might keep one of your eyes when this is done, cherish it like a little milky marble.”

She ignores Wednesday’s glee and tries to lift the spear, grunting in helpless anger when she realises she can’t. It’s perfectly balanced for someone much, much taller than her, and while she still has barely enough strength to hold it, her thin arm is not well connected to the rest of her.

“Still looking for hope in faery gardens?”

Wednesday’s mocking voice makes her want to cringe but she forces her shoulders back and shrugs.

“Anywhere I can.”

She can do this. 

Wednesday is done waiting and as he approaches she wills herself to hold together, hopes she can is strong through whatever he levels at her and refuse to get Gungnir, and knows as he grips her by the throat and hauls her skywards that she isn’t.

She can’t do this.

She tries to raise the spear, gripping it for dear life, but the dead weight drags her arm down and she feels stitches splitting. Wednesday’s mask of civility is gone, the storm is pulling his hair around wildly, and he spits his words into her face.

“Give. Me. Gungnir.”

She doesn’t need oxygen but the rage on his face and the helplessness is taking over. She sees Shadow struggling to get to her under a wave of New Media spreading, sees Ostara and the Morrigan working hard to hold back Mr World’s goons, sees so many other gods looking on with eyes full of concern but not for her, never for her.

She stares at Nancy who watches her closely and cocks a brow as if to see, “now what?”

She thinks of Salim, of Essie and this land and the everything she has given up. She needs this to work, she wants this to work, she _believes_ that this will work.

She closes her eyes and let’s a word slip out, a plea, honest and unfettered by qualifiers. She has given everything she has, and now this, a last shot of belief like a desperate antidote to poison.

“Please.”

Her hand, wrapped firmly around a spear that she cannot wield, twitches.

The _spear_ twitches.

Like it’s being yanked.

Like something is grabbing it.

Laura’s eyes open and the spear flies from her hand.

It whips past Wednesday’s head, changing direction to spin around back past his ear and onwards behind her. Wednesday drops her, holding a hand to his head as the ear falls to the ground, blood pouring from the surgically delicate slice.

"GRIMNIR."

Shock slams into her body like electricity.

The bellow that fills the valley cuts through the rain, through the sickly thud of flesh on flesh, through the ripples of power that threaten eardrums. It’s a howl of rage that brooks no argument, no ability to ignore, booming and wild and silencing the wind itself for a moment.

As Wednesday stares behind her, up towards the house, she sees something in his eye she has never seen before, few people have - fear. 

For a moment, even the storm is still.

The battle grinds to a halt and Gods turn.

Laura turns slowly, carefully, her body barely holding together and a stiffness in her limbs like being slowly frozen. There’s a prickling on her neck and her clouding vision seems to momentarily clear as something bright and painfully close to hope flares in her chest.

He’s here.

It’s a gut punch and she knows that if her body had any life left in it at all it she would be shaking, overwhelmed and terrified. 

He's larger than life, towering over the field bare chested, a thick twist of gold resting around his neck and his hair braided with spikes. Blue marks slash over either side of his chest, rising up over broad shoulders. The same blue markings cut across his face, a face she can only stare at, here in the flesh after how many dreams, nightmares of a king sitting on a neon bathed throne now here in the flesh and blood.

She swallows.

It's not Sweeney. She knows that.

Not when he glows like that, not when his eyes are made of fire and the gold of the crown at his neck looks sun-forged even in the gloom of the storm.

This isn't a leprechaun or some other magical creature.

This isn't a tired drunk pulling one foot after the other on the side of the road. 

This isn't the guilty eyed, sarcastic mess she'd mocked in bars. 

This isn’t the smartass giving her shit at every turn and taking what she threw back at him with more than a little relish.

This isn't the haunted, hungry man she'd tangled with, heady and wild, on an astral plane. 

This is a fae God-king, risen and hungry, full of sun and fire and fury.

“That’s…not possible.”

Wednesday’s voice behind her is a horrified whisper and she doesn’t bother to turn, doesn’t think she could even if she wanted to as he snarls across the valley.

“That’s. Not. Possible!”

“Possible, old man, depends on the story.” Nancy’s voice is dripping with amusement. “Should read more, you might learn somethin’.”

The figure on the hill beats the ground with his spear and the earth seems to shake. The ripples are not the threat of a quake, something chaotic and frenzied, but the shifting, rolling hum of answering vibrations; as if something missing from the land has returned. A calling, a return acknowledged by this place of power.

She becomes aware of a low drumming, a thrum across the valley, a building and wild sound from another place, another time.

She hears Baron Samedi, conspicuously absent for so much of the battle, whisper in her ear. She cannot see him but the words shiver across her like a breeze.

"Look, little Laura Moon...look what you did."

The figure at the top of the hill beats the ground again with his spear and the Morrigan appears as if called, first a great crow and then suddenly splintered and assembled beside him. Tall, willowy and pale, her chest bare and her skin marked in runes, she stares at him. Her expression is one of awe and relief and finally anticipation.

She turns from him and releases a scream out onto the valley, a battle cry, a warning, and Laura covers her ears as the drums prepare to split.

Another beat of the spear and Maman Brigette cracks into being, splendid in her whipping skirts, her skull mask below her riot of red curls and a firey cross in her hand. Her eyes flash as she takes in the scene below, fierce and not surprised, a death Loa waiting to collect.

That wild sound builds like battle drums duelling a familiar Banda and the sound feels like a heartbeat against Laura’s chest.

The voice that bellows out across the valley is so loud her bones rattle, all growling rage spitting fire downwards. 

“Táim ag an mbord, Grimnir.” _“I am at the table, Grimnir.”_

Nancy’s voice, that deep and powerful timbre that demands respect, echoes the words in English, heated and full of fury.

The warrior on the hill steps forward.

The sky flashes with thunder and electricity races over her skin as Wednesday's eye sparks. The ozone in the air is suffocating. 

“Tabharfaidh tú cath dom.” _“You will give me a battle.”_

The base of the spear hits the ground like a drum as he beats across his chest with a fist. He begins to walk forward, his pace picking up.

“Tabharfaidh tú fuil dom.” _“You will give me blood.”_

The sound is so loud she feels ill, the growling voice amplified and booming across the valley as he continues to stride towards Wednesday, now standing at the ready.

“Tabharfaidh tú do bhás dom.” _“You will give me your death.”_

The spear hits the ground for a final time, a seal on the proclamation being made, and the ground hums with approval as the sky begins to darker and swirl once more. He raises the spear and turns it, whipping it hard enough to sting the air, hard enough to slice the atoms between realms.

Reality rips and ripples and she sees Odin, bearded and furious with his eyes of fire and the thing wearing Sweeney’s face runs, leaps, crossing too huge a distance and landing heavily in front of Wednesday.

She has a pang of selfishness even as her body continues its shut down; does he know her? Does he remember sitting in a field of flowers and offering her a shortcut? Does he remember being bundled in an ice cream truck and crashing Easter celebrations?

Sweeney, or whatever this thing wearing his face really is, circles, forcing Odin to shift to stay in sight, and the refusal of the war god to bear his back is a message read loud and clear by the other deities. 

Her hand twitches as she feels something brush against it, though a glance down tells her there is nothing. 

Laura steps back as they begin, the speed and violence a shock in an already shocking space. One particularly violent collision sends a ripple of energy through the ground, throwing her back into the trees at the edge of the valley, tearing open her dress and torso to expose decaying organs beneath held in place by the remaining shreds of skin and a little stubborn sinew.

She ignores it, stands up and stares.

There's something comical about the massive warrior and dapper suited All father flickering between strength and mortality, or there would be but for the dire situation in which it is occurring. He moves like he was built for it, the spear an extension of an already impressive reach, but Wednesday is not yet exhausted, and even the storm itself appears unable to choose a master.

Lightning crashes across the valley as they clash again and again, the Morrigan and Maman Brigette standing guard in front of the house, a last bastion of defence if the outcome is unfavourable. In the distance she sees Bilquis, hair aflame and lips of gold, is surveying the scene below as if to bear witness.

Laura’s hand twitches again and she hisses at a sudden heat on her fingers, there and gone in an instant. As she watches the battle she thinks for a moment his eyes find hers, gone in an instant to block another blow.

The warrior smashes a fierce blow across Wednesday’s face before bringing the spear up and then down through his foot, slamming it through bone and pinning him to the ground.

Nothing happens. 

Odin's laugh is harsh and manic, as if some semblance of control is beginning to drain away and the warrior stands back to stare at him.

“You fucking mick; you thought you could end me with a fist fight? Me, who has wrought storms and seeded this earth with violence and blood for eons?”

The storm builds and lightning crashes in the distance, before coming down again closer.

Laura feels a pulling in the air by her hand again, feels something open, and though she can still see her fingers she is suddenly aware that they are also elsewhere. She reaches, hitting something long and smooth, gripping it tightly.

It burns, horrifically, and her head snaps up.

She meets wildfire eyes that have finally locked onto her and she understands.

Wednesday’s voice is mocking and madness all at once.

"That's not even my spear!"

Lugh’s grin is a feral, wild thing full of blood thirsty satisfaction. He doesn't look away from Laura as he addresses Odin, and his voice, so familiar she feels the lump in her throat block her entire being, is ragged and breathless with vicious glee. 

"You're fuckin' right it ain't."

Time to play her part in this story.

Wednesday follows the other man’s eyes towards Laura and stares in disbelief.

And Laura begins to run.

She pushes past gods, past trees, picking up speed with every footstep. 

Faster and faster. 

She pushes her exhausted, failing body forward with every bit of superhuman otherworldly magically enhanced bit of divinity she can draw on, feels every sparkle and mote of magic in her blood coalescing to propel her forward, and feels the last of her reservoir shrinking down to a single focal point. She pushes and hones and digs as deeply, as truly, as honestly as she can on everything inside of her.

She runs past Shadow, past the Loa, past World's airline staff and the hissing coils of New Media's spreading arms. 

She runs as if she'll never run again and then when she is sure she cannot run any more she leaps.

She wrenches Gungnir skywards.

There's an unholy howl, a war cry full of rage and joy and relief, and realises it is her own.

For a moment she is suspended mid-air and sees everything. She sees she sees she sees as reality opens, shifts, offers up everything and nothing and stays indifferent to the outcome. She sees options, choices, stories yet unwritten.

She sees. 

And then she drives the spear through Odin's chest.

For a moment, the world is still and silent, and she has the strangest sensation of being caught in a snow globe. She keeps her eyes closed, knowing when she opens them the countdown begins, treasuring the briefest moment of stillness and seeing twilight in her future. If she were someone else perhaps she’d try to stay here longer, floating and weightless and free of time.

She grows impatient and opens her eyes.

The world starts up again and she stares at the spear she has pushed through the god of war. His blood is seeping into the ground below, humming and thrumming like a cat purring at feeding time as the sacrifice drips and pours.

She keeps a hand on the spear, knowing the penalty for letting go, knowing these are her last few moments. Wednesday’s eye is wide in shock and rage, blood pouring from his mouth and the wound in his chest as his exhales in rage and anger.

"You."

She doesn't smile at him now, struggling to stay upright, but she knows her part in this play. She does not look away.

"Me."

Laura McCabe Moon, Laura - won't just fucking stay dead can't mind her own damn business and get on with her unlife always fucking up his plans insignificant little speck of distraction to be neutralised - McCabe Moon. Laura with her quick tongue and heavy heart and cold shoulders and genuine but unfulfilled love of libraries and her fucking refusal to stay the fuck down. Laura the corpse with her book of stories, coin in her hands and magic on her tongue.

Laura McCabe Moon, croupier, wife, thief, cheater, corpse, atheist, storyteller, thorn in his fucking side...

Laura McCabe Moon, god killer.

Odin's eyes close. 

The storm is gone.

She reaches forward a trembling hand almost completely frozen and twists her fingers into his eye socket, withdrawing the bulb like a grotesque trophy. She stares at it for a moment before dropping it to the ground and crushing it beneath her boot. 

She gives herself a second, and then turns to him.

***

It’s faint.

Barely noticeable.

No one, god or human alike, would normally be able to see it.

But they are not gods. Nor humans.

They are death Loa, they hear the call of the graveyard in the air, and they see the barest gleam to the rotting muscle. A glow in the sinew.

Brigette grips Samedi’s arm and he nods before she can speak.

“I know, I see…we gotta move fast.”

***

She cannot help the smile that pulls itself across her stiffening features as she stares at him.

Up close it’s like looking at the sun, too intense and raw for her to process the image properly, and she blinks as her body races towards a finish line.

***

Shadow can’t move.

The being he has known as Mad Sweeney watches Laura from a few feet away, breathing heavily. He glows, brilliant and blinding, the sun singing along his skin. He is nothing from this world, not the dust drenched and oh so tired man picking fights in bars, but something too bright and huge and humming with manic, wild energy, the heat of battle and sparks of creation across his frame.

By contrast Laura looks painfully, horrifically real.

Her body is a war zone, organs slipping and her chest blown wide open, Wednesday’s blood over her hands and her dry hair soaked from the rain. Whatever magic had kept her going is clearly fading, and as she stands he can see her grey skin begin to mottle, starting at her legs and moving upwards.

Despite it all, she smiles at the warrior, something real and honest and bright enough that she might even glow faintly.

Relief and joy and even the tiniest bit of hope as the mottling spreads upwards and her hand, her wrist are melted away against the spear.

She cannot go like this.

He needs to do something.

He pulls the coin from his pocket and stares at it for a second before stepping forward, only to find his arm gripped tightly and a smooth voice in his ear.

“No, baby, that ain’t gonna cut it.”

“She’s about to-“

“You gotta stop this, gotta let the Baron dig her grave.”

Shadow wants to scream as he watches the scene in front of him.

“I can’t just-“

“If you wanna pay back that debt you owe, you better listen.”

He turns to the red-haired woman with the skull sunken against the top portion of her face and eyes flashing green. Shadow doesn’t bother asking how Brigette knows what he owes, what he failed to do, what he wonders every day whether he should have done.

_ “When the time comes…don’t get in the fucking way.” _

Maman Brigette nods as if knowing the memory is pricking at him, looking across the field to Bilquis, who smiles back. She grips Shadow’s arm so tightly her fingers cut over the brightness shining over his skin, and he feels the rough edges of tombstones in her hands, or skeleton bones in her thumb.

Her words brook no argument.

“This time…get in the way.”

***

Laura doesn’t see recognition on his face but she sees something, though perhaps that’s a justifiable expression from anyone looking at a corpse clutching a spear that is destroying their arm. She wonders if the whole valley can smell the surely malodourous sizzle of putrefying flesh, crackling as it melts.

Perhaps it’s something else, some kind of feral memory, and she wonders if he knows he’s held her against him while she shuddered and keened and crashed into him. She wonders if he remembers cars being dropped on his feet and fighting on a train and long days spent in small cars alternating between hurt and interest.

She wonders if any of the shards that make up this being include her, if any part of her is branded on the being that he is, and whether that’s a good thing.

He keeps staring and then something shifts.

His expression, a slight narrowing of the eye and tilting of the head, is so familiar it’s like being stabbed.

His eyes change, no longer fire but a familiar hazel, the colour of woods and bark. His heavy breathing seems like the only sound in the valley as he stares, something sparking as a smile of disbelief breaks across his face. He grins at her, the same shit eating grin from the night she met him, and his voice is raw and rasping as if from lack of use.

“Hi.”

She lets out a sob that has no tears behind it, nothing to let it break and loosen.

She wants to grab him, slap him, head butt him across the field. She wants him to hold her, to feel his heat, know whether she can still drown in the smell of whisky and cigarettes and smoke and the forest and salt water. She wants to lick and bite and scratch at him to prove to herself that he's really there, flesh and glorious blood.

She wants to shout at him and scream and cry and tell him he's an asshole of the highest order and that she has missed him so much it is hard to believe she could exist and about Essie's house and the library and Salim and stories, the stories, all the stories.

She wants to tell more stories.

She wants to stay.

She wants to kiss him.

She lets out a mirthless laugh as the spear continues to destroy her hand, cauterising and melting and depleting. His eyes widen as he seems to take in her decomposing body, roaming over roam exposed entrails, bone, the mottling spread of death.

When she speaks she can hear the rasp of her voice over tightening vocal cords still struggling with sobs and tears she cannot create. 

"Where the fuck have you been?"

She can’t wait for the response, she knows that. She has cheated and cheated but Anubis sits quietly in the distance and she can feel the end.

Time’s up.

Her lips quirk into a smile and she leans towards him and lets go.

The last of the magic drains out of her body, the last shreds of sparkle dissolve in her veins, and she feels herself shuffling lose the mortal coil.

And then Laura McCabe is dead.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks
> 
> My country is burning at the moment. If you're so inclined (and I understand that not everyone is in the position to do so, in which case sharing is also incredibly appreciated) consider donating to one of the orgs trying desperately to help, such as this one here:
> 
> https://www.gofundme.com/f/fire-relief-fund-for-first-nations-communities
> 
> Or other orgs listed here:  
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/bushfire-crisis-how-can-i-donate-and-help/11839842

**20 minutes before the death of Laura Moon**

Bilquis stands on the porch and closes her eyes, inhaling deeply. The air is perfumed with petrichor, ozone, and violence.

She hates this.

Hates the blood and the anger and the stupidity of war. The arrogance of seeking to dominate and eliminate. 

She hates bloodshed, but the plan will not work without it. They so rarely do.

He had warned her of that. Anansi, her beautiful and brilliant Anansi, calling on her to see their people in need and see peace for what it was; a tool used to avoid responsibility. 

She looks down and sees Anansi locked in battle and remembers when she whispered her plan into his ear and asked him what he thought happened when the gods themselves believed.

_“Believe in what?”_

_She smiles, enigmatic and serene, and his eyes narrow before widening in shock, in horror, in a little bit of awe at her ambition._

She smiles to herself as thunder booms across the sky. 

She is avoiding nothing, not anymore.

And the story grows. Every relationship reinforced or built through shared experience or history or finding the ties in myths, every generously given story and retelling, every moment of engagement had bred and compounded something glorious and connected across a divided country. 

What other gods could fathom such a gambit, invest in such a broken player?

To take a heart so selfish and lost and see it become open, vulnerable, exposed. To see hope built and shattered and then clung to with desperation and fervour. To see love, pure and offered without expectation or entitlement, coupled with sacrifice and offering. 

She shivers.

She is not arrogant, well aware in fact of the importance others have played in this work.

_"A glass of champagne, please."_

_From behind the bar the Loa had stared at her, two sets of very different eyes locking on with the same mix of respect and suspicion, and more than a little threat. She smiled._

_"La vrai sangue de l'amour...one would almost think you were calling to me."_

_The Baron shook his head._

_"Just a trick. The girl kept lyin' to herself, sought resurrection...we can't be givin' that kinda thing up too easy."_

_"Your trick seems well targeted."_

_He smiles, "we do what we do."_

_Maman Brigette had placed the glass of sparkling champagne in front of her with pursed lips, and Bilquis had nodded. _

_"Yes, what you do...returning life to the dead…that's why I am here."_

She had laid out everything, clear and honest, the leprechaun and the dead girl, Gungnir and the hoard, the Morrigan, Wednesday, Mr World...the plan.

She had left to let them think and been unsurprised when they had arrived, known that Brigette would not let the decimation of a pantheon stand, knew that the Baron would follow his dark lady where she needed to go.

She hadn’t told them her suspicions, but the Loa are sharp. She knows they will see the opportunity available, the reality of what happens when you stand to close to the story, when you unwittingly insert yourself into it, when even gods themselves begin to believe.

She will offer her help when she can, and know her voice will count for a great deal.

She waits, ignoring the sounds of the battle below.

She feels more whole and complete than she had in years of swallowing her worshippers (a more intimate kind of offering, and one always so willingly given). 

Her crown has never felt more gloriously golden and heavy and as the air around her swirls and becomes tense with a building pressure she smiles

The pressure increases as magic and atoms and belief shift and coalesce and then the bowl into which that love infused elixir had been poured is empty, the red and sizzling liquid taken and accepted. The sensation intensifies to the point of pain and when her ears feel close to popping suddenly there he is.

She takes in the size of him, all rangy muscles, covered in woad and a pretty, pretty crown, and she can feel the difference already. The power crackling around him, the intensity of his being.

She smiles. 

Excellent.

***

**10 minutes before the death of Laura Moon **

He comes back into existence not with a bang but with utter silence.

He can’t even scream, can’t force oxygen through his lungs and air past his vocal cords as they are reforged and reborn of memory and myth and legend and stories, so many stories. In the cracks between atoms slip bowls of warm milk, pieces of fresh baked bread, a splash of whisky and something more, something much, much stronger.

He's never felt an offering so strong before, so wholly and completely given.

The thread running through, a sizzling red brilliance, blood soaked in, drenched in, infused with love that feels hard won and harder given and hopeful nonetheless.

It’s a cacophony of colour and sound desperate to be fully formed and seeking only a final push to solidify. 

_“Please.”_

A single word, a plea uttered with honesty and hope and mourning all at once, it the catalyst that sparks the final electric beat of completion and then he is real, he is whole…

…he is flat on his back on the front lawn of a house that looks vaguely familiar. The ground beneath him calls to him, buoys him and bathes him, sings its welcome back to him and he struggles to pull himself upright.

He stares at his hands, no longer bathed in neon blue but in the gloom and crackle of the storm above. 

He knows he is strong, stronger than he thinks he has felt in years, stronger than he thinks he has ever felt…though he has no idea how he felt before.

Lightning cracks the sky and he clutches his head as neurons shift and vie for top placement. His mind feels full of fog, thick plumes of smoke obscuring memory and knowledge and identity and history, jagged pieces of a smashed puzzle that can’t quite come together because things keep shifting over them.

He touches his chest, comes away with woad on his hand, feels the crown around his neck and nods. 

He knows enough.

_Fomorians, jealous and vengeful against his people's progress, their learning and craft and songs. A great battle, a head in his hands raised to the masses to show them strength and quell their fears._

He can feel the tug and crackle of magic in his veins, laughs a desperate, heady laugh of shock as he feels the warmth of the sun’s treasure, the primal solar heat at his fingertips once more.

Once more? When had he had it? When had he lost it? 

His eyes widen as the lightning cracks again.

A storm. A battle.

On his land.

“You have travelled very far to come back.”

He stares at the woman in front of him and recognises only that she is a being far older than he, and that she is exquisitely beautiful. She smiles a golden lipped smile, her eyes fire and her illuminated crown set on a glorious tumble of black curls. 

He takes her in slowly and does not hide his smile, his interest.

“Banríon órga…taispeáin dom.” 

She nods, beckons him, and he follows her to where the land drops down to a valley below. He grabs his head as his mind splits again, battles in multiple realms of existence drawing his attention, and he draws himself to his full height to see who dares cross and draw blood on his lands.

He feels something familiar tugging at him and focuses on the figures in the middle of the valley. He recognises Grimnir, bearded and fire-eyed, standing on his land as if he has any right to set foot.

A memory shard pierces him, dragging his attention.

_“I would have given you your battle.”_

_“You were always my battle.”_

_A spear through his chest and a final, glorious fuck you to a one-eyed prick._

It’s there and gone but he’s seen enough, knows what is owed. 

His attention is briefly drawn to a small, thin figure being held up and holding something familiar.

His eyes widen as the figure clutches, barely, one of his greatest treasures, something long hidden and longer forgotten. The fucking arrogance.

He reaches out a hand to call his spear and feels its answering, almost desperate hum. 

It comes, as it always has, and the moment the sleg hits his hand he feels himself gaining a piece, the power of it heating his lungs and pushing his words out over the valley.

“GRIMNIR.”

As the Old God turns he considers the house behind him, unwilling to leave it exposed. He can feel them close by, one a strong tie and the other a distant memory, but there are allies here and so he beats his spear down, hard, calling them to him. 

He feels them joining him, smells the tang of battle and the smoke of the graveyard, so familiar and so foreign, and knows without looking that his call has been well answered. 

With the matter tended to, he proceeds downwards. He relishes the fear in the other man’s eye as he proclaims his entitlements. He will have his battle, have Grimnir’s blood, have his death. Debts will be repaid; he is owed.

He has missed this.

_Swing, duck, hit._

_Swing, duck, slam the spear against knee and up into jaw._

He has missed the thrill of this.

_Shift, haymaker, the satisfying crack of knuckles against nose._

The sheer fucking joy of it.

_Slip, turn, change footing._

Rising in his veins.

Something catches his attention, a hum against his skin. He feels the salty tang of another debt owed and glances at the figure thrown backwards, the one that had taken his spear.

Thin and unhealthy, female, is the most he gleans before turning back to Grimnir. 

He can’t take full control of the storm, not yet, not while he's still getting used to this power, this body, this existence again.

He finds another path. 

He spins and slams, using the borrowed moment to call to the hoard. He hasn’t been able to in years (he thinks, maybe, who knows?) but it answers and he finds what he needs quickly. He considers saving the blow for himself but there is that other debt nagging at him, unclear but solid, and so he shifts the hoard’s opening.

He sends it towards the thin woman, hopes her boney arms have strength enough for Gungnir. 

A chance to repay two promises at once.

He whips his spear across Grimnir’s face with a satisfying crack and uses the moment to drive it through his foot and into the earth, pinning him in place. 

He meets the woman’s strangely white eyes and sees the other spear in her hand. He grins, blood rushing and battle heat wild around him, and finds his mother tongue insufficient for the point he’s making to the one-eyed fuck in front of him. 

“You’re fuckin’ right it ain’t.”

The woman begins to run.

She’s quite a sight as she moves, white dress flowing behind her and boots hitting the ground hard, and he can feel the sparkle of familiar magic in her veins, though little of it seems to remain. Her feet hit the ground in a wild tattoo, skinny frame hauling itself forward as if drawing on everything available to push, push, push.

She leaps and seems to hang in the air a moment, and he wonders briefly what deity he's encountered with her sunken eyes and hair streaming behind her like a flag. 

She slams the spear through Grimnir’s chest, the impact pushing him back until the point hits the ground.

The blood of the Old God pours onto the earth and he feels his brain short circuit. For a second he is inundated with pleasure, with power, the heady rush of a true sacrifice, a godly sacrifice seeping into his land. As the blood leaches into earth so tightly tied to belief of, for, in him that he can’t move. It’s an intoxicating flow, a drum beat against his soul, building so much he can barely contain the energy of it.

He barely hears what they say to one another, brief and no love lost, too busy struggling with this sizzling energy.

The power swells and then slowly settles, solidifying him further.

The woman turns to him.

She seems to recognise him. A worshipper? A follower? Some distant relative of an offspring with throwbacks to his homeland?

And then she smiles.

It’s a sweet smile, genuine, and lights up her face in a way that could leave a body breathless. Full lips and long lashes around those terrifying eyes make for a twisted kind of beauty, but that smile is made of sunlight, and he lets it wash over him.

For a second he sees her crouched beside him and smiling, this time mocking and full of brat and bile.

_“You can’t take it, can you? I have to give it to you freely.”_

It’s gone as quickly as it happens but it’s enough.

Something in him breaks.

For a moment he can’t move as the splintery, jagged shards of his mind pull tightly together and provide pieces of the puzzle he hadn’t known were missing.

_“Chop-chop, Ginger Minge, let’s go.”_

_“You know you could try a little gratitude every now and then. Might improve your luck.”_

_“I told you not to call me that.”_

_“Fuck you, deal’s off, I’m keeping your fucking coin.”_

_Watching her from a distance for months, years, laying Wednesday’s plans in place and wondering why she chooses to fuck her life up at every turn, why the people in her life can’t see her drowning under her own pain. _

_Milky eyes and brown eyes and rotten flesh and maggots and sarcasm and snark and her face while she watched Salim pray and her anger at Ostara’s information and her wildness as she smashed her way through goons on Mr Town’s train. _

_A fucking brat and complete obsession, waking up to her standing over him and wondering when that became the sight he wanted to wake up to. _

_A stolen moment on an astral plane where he’d waited, still and barely breathing, and she had made a choice to crash against him and shatter them both. The hurt, the betrayal in her expression as she condemned him for the coward he had been. _

_A woman writhing slowly on a stage, bathed in neon moonlight with autopsy scars and battle lines. _

_The Dead Wife, the bitch, the fucking cunt…Laura._

Laura.

Laura fucking Moon.

Laura fucking Moon covered in the blood and gore of a slain Grimnir. 

He’s quite sure that at this moment, intoxicated by fresh sacrifice and potent offerings and strength and magic and the sight of her coated in the ending of an enemy, he’s more aroused than he’s ever been. He wants to fuck her, or push her buttons so she hisses and spits at him, or see if he can make her laugh, or ask her what the fuck is going on, or whether she’s really sending that smile in his direction and what, pray fucking tell, that means.

He wants.

He wants, he wants, he wants. 

He says the first thing that comes to his mouth, simple and reminiscent of a lifetime ago when his hands had been cuffed behind his back and his coin had been lodged in her chest.

“Hi.” 

She stares at him for another second in disbelief and then lets out a choked sound, violent and sharp, like an animal in agony.

He wants to reach out, confused and concerned, until finally the picture before him starts to click together. He sees what he hasn’t been seeing, too entranced by that smile and the end of Grimnir.

Her eyes, so milky they’re almost white. The mottled skin of her legs is a bruising mix of purple and grey, the torn dress and exposed insides, blackened and rotting and barely contained by sinew. One hand is injured, the other is being slowly burned by the spear she’s still clutching, and he realises he’s seeing last seconds. 

She laughs and it is a dead sound, one of disbelief and pain, and when she looks at him again he struggles to make his mouth, his body, his hands work.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

And then she’s gone.

His mind splinters again and a sound fills the valley with fury and grief.

*** 

**The death of Laura Moon**

The world is silent for a moment and then a howl, a roar of pain and rage fills the air. The ground shakes and the house above the valley rattles and the skies, blessedly clear for a moment, become dark and foreboding. 

Shadow swallows as Laura drops to the ground and the decay seems to consume her body like flame crawling up paper.

He feels a tightening in his arm like fingers gripping him, breaking him of the dwelling tide of grief, and he remembers. 

_“When the time comes…get in the way.” _

He sees Sweeney land heavily on his knees and then move forward, that roar of grief and something akin to insanity pouring from him. In that moment Shadow knows, without a doubt, that if Sweeney touches that decaying body it’ll mean something is truly lost.

Shadow bolts forward, feeling himself burning and bright, and slams into the other man so hard that the valley is briefly filled with a supernova of light, shards piercing every corner of the land and power echoing throughout. 

He holds on with everything he can, everything he has, everything he has owed. He clings on as that howl of anger sees the bigger man scrabbling and fighting to shrug him off but Shadow holds tight, pours everything he can tap into, the two of them bathed in light. Between his drive and the warrior’s agony he has the advantage.

It’s enough. Just.

He's in the way. 

The Loas descend in a cackling din of hyena laughter, a wild cacophony of hoots and hollers, spirits shifting and shaping around them as they swirl over the rotting corpse and usher her on. 


	19. Chapter 19

This is not beyond them.

The power of soaked ground and a death so long overdue is heady and difficult to control, but this is their world, their territory, their space in existence.

They hold tight to their bounty, clinging to it as they pull through and past and over and around reality.

They feel it all around them, the glowing, gleaming gloaming that is seeking to descend.

But there is more here, the threads fragile but very real, pulling together towards something.

The banda is an ecstatic, joyful tattoo that builds and shakes as they clutch their prize and pull it forward.

Finally, as reality shifts and rips around them, they can hold on no longer.

They fling the remains towards the vastness of an uncaring spectrum of existence, feel the levelling influence of love and connection, and then the rest is out of their hands.

The Baron kisses his consort deeply as he takes shape in the twilight, her presence leaving him to undertake the next part of the journey alone.

He turns, sees the scales and a dark figure waiting in the distance, and begins to whistle as he walks forward.

_What happens when the gods themselves believe?_

***

**Two days after the death of Laura Moon **

When Salim wakes up he knows.

He’s not sure how. Maybe it’s in the Jinn’s stillness, the fact that they’re no longer at the house in Virginia. Maybe it’s a void in his gut that says something terrible has happened.

The motel is dim and the air is too still. 

He sits up gingerly, the pain in his midsection making him gasp. He walks to the mirror and is unsurprised to see his ribs wrapped, his face bandaged. The Jinn’s voice is quiet, reserved.

“It will heal. Nothing permanent.”

“You did this?”

The Jinn stands behind him in the mirror and he is struck, for a moment, by how different they look. Such darkness and such light. Still, the Jinn hesitates a moment before nodding, and Salim doesn’t try to hide the smile that breaks over his face.

“You took me away.”

“She…the dead girl said you needed to be safe. She was right.”

Salim watches him and sees enough. He won’t push, not now, but one day soon he will ask for the rest of that story. For now he lets himself take a small step backwards and when the Jinn wraps arms around his waist Salim looks away, lets them both just feel the moment.

But that feeling from when he woke up is still there.

It’s a tug, gentle and insistent, and he has seen too much to ignore when being sent a message like that.

“We have to go back to the house.”

The Jinn does not move for a moment and Salim thinks of cool nights on the porch in Virginia. He wonders when he stopped being surprised by having someone back him, having someone rescue him.

“I know.”

Salim turns to leave but the Jinn grabs him by the shoulder.

“Salim, before we go,” he pauses as if trying to think of how something should be said. “The dead girl is gone.”

_“Salim…please?” She holds up her dough covered hands with a pathetic expression and he laughs, grabbing olive oil to help remove the worst of it before they run out of bread entirely._

_ “For a loaf, use flour. For this, oil is best.”_

_She smiles at him as the dough comes away._

_ “I swear I’ll get the hang of this before I’m-“ she cuts off and he feels her stiffen, realises where her mind has gone. He turns away, giving her the moment and grabbing salt. He sprinkles it on the already baked goods so it melts slightly and then hardens to form a mild crunch on top._

_He turns back, holding out a perfect disc of flat bread to her._

_ “You will. But I’ll still want to help.”_

_She stares at him a moment and then smiles, a light and gentle thing without her usual sass and salt, and he smiles back._

_Hours later, as their food cools and she prepares to pack the basket she takes to the playground with her book and snacks she can no longer even taste, he will stare at her, and wonder what the world will be like when she no longer makes bread with him._

Salim stares at the Jinn who reaches out a hand as if to pat him on the shoulder. He exhales and continues on his path.

They need to get back to the house.

***

**One month after the death of Laura Moon**

Shadow sips his beer.

It’s cool, and the sensation no longer makes him gag as it had a few weeks ago, still recovering from battle wounds and his newfound godliness.

_When he’d slammed into Sweeney, holding on for dear life and something more, he'd felt like he was clutching the sun. The difference between light and fire, energy and heat, had knocked them both to the ground, hard. _

_He could feel the moment the Loa were gone, could see the space where her body had fallen, and when Sweeney’s elbow cracks against his jaw hard enough that it really should have broken, he releases the bigger man, clutching his face and rolling away._

_They both lie there a moment, breathing hard._

_The storm passed overhead, the deities around them leaving quickly to spread the death of Grimnir, lick wounds, and establish the fallout._

_Another story to spread._

_Soon, Shadow knew, they were alone._

_Neither man moved._

_Sweeney’s breathing had levelled off and he’d simply lay there, staring at the sky with glassy eyes that occasionally turned to fire, and Shadow hadn’t been able to bring himself to leave, so he’d lain there too._

_Neither of them spoke._

_What was there to say?_

_They laid there until they were the only two on the field, until the sky had cleared and the sun had come out, until the sun had moved slowly and then faster, until twilight had begun to creep over the valley._

_Sweeney sat up._

_ “You got in the way.”_

_Shadow sat up._

_ “Yep.”_

_He pulled the coin from his pocket, staring at it for a moment before holding it out to Sweeney._

_“Guess you’ll be needing this back.”_

_Sweeney stared at the coin._

_For once there was no guilt or hunger in his expression, but something very, very far away behind his eyes._

_Shadow waited, and after a while Sweeney took the coin back._

_He clutched it tightly and when he opened his hand again it was gone. He had stood then, gripping his spear tightly, and looked at the spot where Grimnir’s body was still impaled on Gungnir._

_Sweeney planted his spear and wrenched Gungnir out with a sickening sound, staring at it with an almost clinical expression that clashed with the tension in his shoulders._

_Shadow stared at the being in front of him._

_He found it hard to align this man to the Mad Sweeney who had exhaustedly confessed to fucking his ex-wife in New Orleans as an attempt to lift Shadow’s veil and get him to see the world for what it was. The drunk he found under a bridge babbling about being left high and dry. The man who had tried to warn him, again and again, of Wednesday’s true nature. The guilty, angry asshole who had flung darts with ease and accidentally given up his lucky coin._

_This creature was something else, alight with purpose and sacrifice on home ground, but there was something painfully human about the emotion in his demeanour, the clinical expression dissipating as the hatred and loss that made his mouth twist._

_Sweeney brought Gungnir down over his knee with force and something more, and the crack of the spear breaking in two sounded like a building being toppled, sharp and echoing through the valley._

_The energy within was released, the runes were dead, and Sweeney sent the pieces to the hoard._

_He turned to Shadow again._

_“What now, Moon Shadow?”_

_There was something mad and broken about his eyes, not the lost or guilty weight that had once lived there, but now something dark and grieving and empty._

_Shadow shook his head, unsure of what to say._

_Sweeney stared a moment longer at the place she had fallen. He inhaled a great breath and then roared, a ululation of pain and rage and loss into the sky. His head stayed turned towards the heavens as if the sound could travel up and knock back what he felt was taken from him._

_And then, without another word, he was gone._

Shadow had picked himself up, slowly, and stumbled back to the house that was both empty and far too full.

_It’s a week after she’d killed Wednesday and left them all reeling, gods empowered and Shadow bereft._

_He closes the front door behind him. _

_The house still has her things inside, books and notes organised on the wooden table in the kitchen, clothing carefully hung and bedding folded neatly. Some of this is his own work, the rest are things that have just seemed to happen, like the fire cleared out and dried logs stacked neatly in it ready for use._

_The remaining food stuffs, some baked goods, hard cheese, fruit and coffee, he’d eaten throughout the week between sleeping and recovering. Slamming into Sweeney had cost him, he can feel that. Not quite the pain of an injury, but a draining sensation as if he’s done an intense workout; the ache of a body used properly but pushed hard._

_It’s time to leave._

_The first time he’d lost her it had been a shock amongst other shocks, the painfully mundane cleaning out of the house after discovering her infidelity. He remembers the feeling of practical cleaning filling something aching inside him, giving him a purpose. Now he has felt relieved for the house’s strange idiosyncrasies, has not been fazed by the other faces that appear in mirrors, the way doors sometimes shift or he finds books or open windows as if he’s being directed._

_He steps off the porch and stares at his hands for a moment as the sunlight warms his skin, before moving to the tree in the yard._

_He wonders if he should plant something, or stick up a plaque, but she’s got a gravestone elsewhere, and this tree seems enough._

_He’d found her the first time he came here, lying under this tree, hair rustling the breeze._

_He sighs. _

_When she had last died, grieving had been near impossible. He couldn’t mourn properly because he was meant to be so angry, and he was so angry but he couldn’t be freed or cleansed by the anger because he was also mourning. Neither let the other exist, and so when the option to numb them down was provided, he took it._

_Now, though, he grieves._

_Cleanly._

_"I miss you."_

_It's as good a place as any to start, but as the words start to come he can't seem to stopper them, as he takes in the stillness around him and thinks of their time in the house._

_ “I didn’t get it, Laura. Not while we were alive. But I see it now. You were never mine, you were never even your own. And then all this happened and you got dragged in and thrown away again and again and…"_

_He runs a hand over his face. _

_"…Laura, Sweeney told me that night that we weren’t heroes, gods, and he was right. We’re not. There’s too many power plays and look at what that meant for you, for me, for us. I saw you when I said Sweeney died, you wanted to be done. But you kept going. You found something, you found it here, and you kept spreading those stories." _

_"Deities are stronger now.” He holds his hands in front of him, sees the faint glow just under his skin. “I’m stronger. I’m…more. Or less, it’s really hard to say some days.”_

_He looks to the trees behind the house and avoids setting eyes on the valley._

_ “That hope we started, you started, keeps spreading, Laura. Sure there are plenty who are trying to twist it but…I’m starting to think that’s always the case. But it's not all guns and followers now...it's people using stories to explore the world and feel like they have control over something, or connecting without someone else. It's trying and hoping...and that's because of you."_

_He laughs, thinking of her flat eyes and complete disinterest in belief. _

_"Only you could turn revenge into something beautiful."_

_He stops smiling. _

_"I wish I’d never married you, Laura.” It’s the truest thing he’s said in some time. “I wish I could have seen how unhappy and lost and false you really were being and sought to be a friend, or someone you could count on without obligation. I wish you could have been honest with me, I wish you could have been honest with yourself, or that I’d seen how much you were pretending.”_

_He looks back at the front porch._

_ “The last few weeks in this house, with you and the others…I started to feel strange but whole. Like things clicked the way they were always meant to, like I found me and you and how we fit together as a team without the other shit between us."_

_He doesn't wipe away the tears now._

_"I miss you, Laura. You were so brave at the end and I know how much you wanted to rest and you just kept going until…”_

_He thinks now about her face, her smile when she saw Sweeney returned, her sob that seemed to echo through the whole valley._

_ “…until it was done. You were so brave."_

_He lets himself go now, lies back on the grass and stares at the too clear sky as his tears hit the ground beneath him. _

_"I’m sorry, Laura. I’m sorry I didn’t choose you and I’m sorry you kept trying to choose me and failing yourself. I hope…I hope in the end you felt like you chose."_

_He lays there for a long time, lets the salty air and smell of grass wash over him._

_After an amount of time deemed just right by the universe for processing the quantum of grief, Shadow stood up, and walked back to the road._

_He couldn’t have known that, only hours later, another of the house’s inhabitants would be returning with wrapped ribs and his lover in tow._

Shadow continues to sip his beer.

It has been two months since he left the house for the last time.

His knuckles are bruised from a recent encounter with New Media and the remaining goons of a suspiciously gone to ground Mr World. He’s managed to find himself in more than one territory dust up, working hard to remind warring factions of the benefit of their power boost, of how connection was the key and these wars would only serve to carve up power rather than ensure it could expand.

Sometimes it has worked, other times it hasn’t.

He feels like he’s getting the hang of some things, though at times it is a lonely journey.

He’s found Anansi, or been found by him, often with snippets of conversations he only half understands.

He’d thought about going back to the house only to wonder what he could hope to find there.

He had asked around, heard stories being spread, including some that made him smile. A girl in white with faery tales on her tongue, grapes in her hands, and a pretty bow in her hair.

_"Do you really know what you're doing here?"_

_She shakes her head, gnawing on her lower lip with a small smile. _

_"Just...telling stories."_

Shadow continues to sip his beer.

***

**3 months after the death of Laura Moon**

When he finally returns home she is waiting, tense with need and frustrated at being away from him for so long.

He is tired and drained and lets her fuss about him with powders in his whisky and food in his belly.

The graveyards and cemeteries have served as resting places along the way, but he poured a great deal into keeping pathways open long enough for belief to take hold, and now he needs the comforts of home.

She waits until he has had his fill, fills his glass again and again as he smokes his cigar, sits in his lap and lets his hands map over her body again. It’s a familiar ritual, seldom used because they so often avoid prolonged separation, but enough that she can feel him checking over hipbones and her spine, reacquainting himself with her.

She waits to ask, and so he tells her.

“It happened as the Queen said it would.”

She nods and stays silent, unsure what to do with the hope in her chest, the strange anticipation in her blood. He smiles against her shoulder, his lips tickling against her skin as he speaks.

“You heard from our boy?”

She leans back against him as his hands grow firmer on her belly, shaking her head and closing her eyes.

“Ain’t come round yet…but he’s here. Can still feel him, runnin’ round with his mind all together and all apart. Found his backstage again.”

He wraps strong arms around her and she presses more tightly against him, feeling him depleted and hungry. It makes his voice husky.

“You did good, chere. Ain’t on us no more.”

She nods.

“He’ll be howling by soon enough, I expect. He won’t go back there.”

It’s a good thing, for all their sakes, while things are so very fragile.

He kisses the base of her neck she shifts against him, smiling as his arms tighten and a very different kind of hunger begins to present itself. A drumming in the between places, and heady tattoo in the layers of reality begins to sound around them, and he stands, bringing her with him, her laughter filling the empty bar as he hauls her into his arms and to another reality of their own making.

***

**4 months after the death of Laura Moon**

Bilquis sips her cocktail smiling at the pretty bartender with the eager eyes.

“Delicious.”

Anansi keeps one arm over the back of her chair, enjoying the tickling of her hair against his hand.. He notices the interaction and chuckles to himself, flicking out his fingers to ensure the bartender trips later, landing in her lap. 

He has missed this level of power, to indulge in mischief so easily. 

Of course, there have been other, more significant perks. As the stories continue spread and grow people feel empowered by them. Fresh, new candidates are running for offices, demanding changes to political rules that benefit the rich and wealthy and white, creating rebellions within and outside of systems and institutions long thought godly. 

More people than ever are creating art, music, lectures, writings that are disseminated to encourage revolutions of change. Unlike the screaming echo chambers or siloed discussions that have dominated discourse, the spreading and sharing of stories has meant new pathways, new and joyful connections, and a willingness to listen and learn. 

There is change. 

Her voice is soft. 

"You are well."

He laughs at that. 

"I am fuckin’ majestic. Have you seen this suit?" 

It's true, the shot silk teal is a thing of beauty, and the shirt underneath is so well cut he might as well have been born with it. 

She laughs at that, a sinfully smoky sound that makes him hungry for her. 

The evening is much better than last night.

_Anansi slides into the seat beside him, sniffing his nose at the beer Shadow is sipping._

_“For a god of beauty and purity you sure like some shitty fuckin’ booze.”_

_Shadow glares. Or continues glaring. It’s hard to tell sometimes._

_ “Not all of us need our drinks to match our outfits.”_

_Nancy laughs. The boy is too fucking much._

_“Cute. Tell me, Shadow Moon, in between your forays into godliness have you seen Groundskeeper Willie ‘round?”_

_Shadow is quiet for a moment and that’s answer enough._

_“So he’s still screaming at the trees?”_

_He’d heard the big man had disappeared after Odin’s ending; more than likely he slipped into a newly reachable backstage, staying close to his point of power while dealing with his re-entry into the universe. _

_Shadow shakes his head._

_“Nope. Last I heard he was tending bar down in New Orleans in between whatever the fuck it is that Sweeney used to do all the time.”_

_Nancy chews on that for a moment. He has heard the Loa returned recently, wonders when Sweeney stepped outside and re-joined the world. Perhaps he heard calls and offerings, perhaps he just wanted a drink._

_Perhaps his shattered mind had simply forgotten why he was hiding to being with. Wouldn’t be the first time._

_ “Is he-“_

_ “He’s sane. Well…as close to sane as Sweeney gets I guess. Heard he had a run in with the Morrigan but they sorted it out.”_

_Nancy chuckles._

_“That’s one way to put it. But that ain’t his debt to collect.”_

_Shadow is quiet for a moment before nodding. _

_Anansi considers telling him more, asking him if he’s capable of holding onto belief, asking him to keep the story going._

_But there is little point, not with it long escaped, and though he’s never been one to hide from the cruel and frank truth of things, he’s also not one to give hope without knowing it will be delivered._

_Nancy finishes his drink and leaves Shadow to the dim bar._

"Shadow Moon says the oversized leprechaun is still around, ain't finished himself off yet."

Keeping watch on an Old God newly reborn was no easy feat. Over the past few months Shadow has attracted all kinds of trouble and challenge that one might think out of character for a God whose whole shtick was being so pure and beautiful.

Part of that could be that he’s itching for a fight, but while he’s certainly feeling the newness of it all, Shadow’s not turning out anger at anyone else. More likely it’s New Media trying to test his mettle and see if she can tempt him dark side. So far, so annoyed, and the man seems more than willing to keep different sides focused on building something rather than trying to tear it apart.

Bilquis nods.

“The Loa will be watching him.”

"Any word on your little guardian?" 

She is still for a moment. 

"He's holding vigil."

"You're sure he's the right one?" 

She nods. 

"No one else could give over that kind of faith."

He wants to ask more, is desperate to ask more, but he has learned that waiting will yield a better, sweeter outcome for them both. She sips her drink, a vodka martini with extra olives, well balanced, sharp and rich. She turns to him and places a hand on his leg as she leans in. 

"The Loa caught their moment. Something is trying to take shape.” She pauses, a smile dancing at the edge of eyes before she becomes more serious. “It's fragile."

She is being honest, vulnerable, and in both she continues to be more powerful than other gods who have commanded armies and had sacrifices in the millions.

Anansi stares at her, wondering whether anyone could fathom her ambition.

He cannot remember ever hearing the story of something being nudged into existence, wonders how much is the universe permitting versus her strategic direction and intense belief. The stories, Grimnir's downfall, an offering so powerful it brought a God back in to being...and now this. 

Creation. 

He orders an Old Fashioned and watches the bartender try to concentrate while she shoots him those eyes and smiles. 

Incredible. 

***

**Six months after the death of Laura Moon**

Salim snips herbs and brings them inside, leaving them on the kitchen island for later cleaning and use. He sips his tea and enjoys the light breeze coming through the window, the house staying pleasantly cool in the otherwise warm morning sun.

In addition to drying herbs he is also bringing small shrubs inside to keep them going in pots the Jinn has bought from local stores. A precaution against the summer heat.

The Jinn will return soon. He will watch Salim make mashuai with the fresh fish he brought home earlier, the rich meal filling the house with the scent of lemon. There are still halwas left over from a month ago, rich and sweet, for afterwards. Plus peanut butter and crisp, cold apples.

Nostalgic, nourishing food. 

He glances to the stairs, he’ll go up soon.

He had arrived back here with the Jinn just over a week after Grimnir’s end. 

_It is cold, December passing and the new year sending snow over the entirety of the path ahead. He wraps himself tightly in his coat as the Jinn grabs bags from the car they have left parked near the main road._

_As the gate opens in front of him, too quickly, as if it’s impatient, he gives himself a moment to pause. The house stands tall and cosy amongst the trees, but there are signs all around of the battle._

_Snapped branches and trees singed and scorched._

_In the valley below is a small crater from some kind of explosion, and Salim wonders at it for a moment before shaking his head and moving to the door._

_It opens and Bilquis smiles at him._

_ “Welcome home.”_

_He nods politely, unsure of the appropriate response, and drops his bag on the floor as she beckons him down the hallway and up the stairs._

_He rarely came up here during those few short weeks (had it only been weeks? it felt like much longer) as he’d helped Laura spread the story. The room at the top of the stairs had been hers, the other one was where Shadow had crashed._

_Bilquis pauses in the doorway of the room at the top of the stairs, the air in the small hallway still and perfumed with sandalwood and spice._

_“What does faith mean to you?”_

_It’s a genuine question._

_He stares at her curiously, considering his words._

_“It is a choice…to see magic all around, to believe. It is given unconditionally, and breathes life into places where there is none.”_

_She smiles at him and he feels something warm and rich heating his skin, something that makes him feel at peace, as if he has given over something very special and it has been appreciated. An exchange._

_Bilquis opens the door and they step into the room._

_It takes his mind a moment to fully register what he is seeing, the picture somehow disparate and split and then…_

_A second later he backs out, stumbles down the stairs, bolts outside to land heavily on the grass and retch up everything his stomach can offer._

_The Jinn strides furiously towards the house but stops dead when Bilquis appears by Salim's side, her voice strong and clear._

_ “This is why you were called back here.”_

_Salim pulls himself up, his hands shaking, as he turns._

_“What…what was that?”_

_She watches him for a moment as if wondering how much to tell him._

_ “A beginning.”_

_Salim feels the Jinn place a hand on his back, steadying him._

_ “W…” he swallows thickly as his mind throws up the image from that room again, the soft light coming through the large bay windows that lead to the balcony, the pale walls and floorboards…the thing on the bed._

_His mind throws up the image again and he struggles to see past the horror and violence of it._

_He struggles to clear his head._

_He has that feeling now, the same one he had when he woke up after the battle, the same one he had leaving a motel room to go in search of the Jinn. His gut, his heart, his head, his faith is calling him to action._

_He draws deeply on himself, looks to the Jinn’s still face and hidden eyes, and addresses the goddess in front of them._

_“What do you need from me?”_

_Bilquis watches him with all seeing eyes._

_“To stand vigil. And to believe.”_

Now, six months after the solstice and Grimnir’s final day, after he had come back to this place, things feel strange.

Salim sips on hot tea, strokes a hand over the book on the table. It is full of stories, hard won and harder retained, his refusal to hand it back to Mr Ibis causing more than a little consternation as to how he, a mortal, thought he could question a god.

But he did, and so the book remains here, with him.

He knows if he had made the claim on any other ground it would not have stood, but the deity with ties to this land is back in being, and although he has been told that Sweeney has no desire to set foot in the house, the territory is still protected.

And so Salim keeps the book, and adds to the stories contained within. The Jinn travels, sometimes hours, sometimes days, ear to the world and bringing back news of the story as it continues to spread.

At times there have been other visitors. The pale man with the strange hair had appeared one day, suggesting he needed to review other channels, check other networks to ensure connections were being made. It had sounded like advice, and felt like a threat, and Salim had smiled as the Jinn warned the deity to enjoy the boost he had without sniffing around for more.

Once Salim had seen a tiny blonde woman in a floral dress and pristine curls standing at the edge of the valley, which had subsequently filled with flowers. He has seen a crow watching the house and known something ancient had hidden behind the feathers.

Today he can feel something in the air, like a growing tension or pressure that requires a catalyst of some kind, to relieve it.

He heads to the window, wondering what could be causing the strangeness. He gets halfway across the floor before becoming aware of something on the edge of his consciousness.

A sound, barely audible in the stillness of the morning, quiet and soft.

The stairs creak and he turns slowly.

There is nothing there, and he feels a chill creeping over his skin as he moves towards them carefully. He walks up, strangely frightened for the first time in a long time, the house seeming too bright in some places, too dark in others.

He walks the short hallway to the bedroom at the top of the stairs, opens the door with a hand he struggles to stop from shaking.

There is a soft light coming through the large bay windows that lead to the balcony, the pale walls and floorboards illuminated by the sun.

And the bed, for the first time in almost six months, is empty.


	20. Chapter 20

Is this madness?

It doesn't feel like madness. 

No what he thinks of as madness anyhow. 

He should know.

He’s been mad before.

Probably always was.

It’s what he has known.

This is different. 

If it's madness then it's a special kind of madness that leaves you stripped and exposed and all too aware of both. 

It’s pretty here. Dappled greens and browns, cool and bright with sunlight. The air is fresh, the breeze is mild and gentle, the scent of earth and foliage and fresh water cutting through. 

He should feel worse.

Should feel his mind rattling and little shards falling away and coming back, losing and slipping and regaining and piecing together at too great a rate to be of any use.

Instead he can see.

Here, in a place he has not been able to find or access for so long, he can access parts of himself that have been long hidden. There are trees, a valley rich with belief and sacrifice, newly added and gloriously vibrant. He can feel his lands calling to him and more, in the distance, the sound of offerings being made.

He remains in his backstage, hunting and drinking cool water before he feels ready to return to reality.

He feels the coin back among the sun’s treasure, can feel luck and fate twining around him again. It's not the haphazard access, the basic reliance on instinct he's had the last few centuries. This is more - he's not under control, who could ever control luck? But he can feel the threads to be plucked and strummed to create music that ripples into reality and shifts, changes, impacts fate and destiny. He can't change the threads but he can join the music. 

It's an intense rush, a gift returned, and if he thinks too long about what it cost he'll lose his mind again. 

For now he runs his fingers through the threads, plucks songs into the air, and listens as melodies take shape. 

He can blow both ways.

***

His mind is rough and wild but he cannot hide from what he knows.

She continued.

She made the offering.

She slammed a spear through Grimnir’s chest.

She turned and smiled at him like she had missed him.

And then she was gone.

He alternates between screaming and creating, chopping branches when the rage is too great, carving and whittling and building when sorrow tries to make a home in his chest.

*** 

He fights trees and tells the birds his secrets. They were always such excellent confidants. The trees are harder to wrangle but by the time he and the woods have fought their battle they're old friends.

He tells them they're beautiful and they rustle with pride. 

It takes a while for his mind to adjust and the grief to be packed away, a shard he decides to set aside.

Eventually his brain pulls together enough to know that he wants a drink.

He leaves his backstage and tests the hoard, finds it wider and more open to him than it has been in so long. No longer a tight, restrictive squeeze – now he can feel the stretch, see what’s inside with ease, pass through at whim without it wiping him so seriously.

He finds his coin, holds it up to the sunlight and wonders whether any part of her is still on it. 

He lets his feet guide him, as they always have.

By the time he stumbles into the Coq Noir and drops his spear against the table top he's slightly closer to sane, and so the screaming of the bar patrons as he bellows for Brigette is unsurprising.

As customers run past him and the lady in question emerges he manages, for a moment, to take in how exhausted she looks, the tense anger in Baron’s expression as he steps around the bar ready to call down hell.

He doesn’t let it throw him off his stride.

"What the fuck-"

She has no time or interest in indulging him, and cuts him off quickly.

"You start in on me like that and I'll be servin' fillet o' Irishman with a side of beard."

She steps towards him, unperturbed by woad and fire and the massive spear, grabbing him by the chin and pulling him towards her.

“You come in here like this, you’re gonna draw attention, doudou mwen.”

She strokes his hair roughly, mindful of the spikes braided in, and he closes his eyes against the first contact he’s had in weeks. Something in him loosens and he’s not sure if she’s working something on him or it’s just the tense, painful grief he’s ignoring so deliberately finding a home in her hands.

He steps away, unwilling to let her pull the pain from him, and ignores the flash of hurt in her eyes. She recovers quickly and her voice is firm.

"You gotta cool this down. Step back."

He exhales slowly and feels himself shifting and by the time he opens his eyes his hair and beard are shorter. He sends his spear back to the hoard, tries to remember how he looked before everything happened, runs a hand over his face.

He’s controlled his form, but he can't stop the intensity, not after so long without it. It's like his body refuses to let go of something it went without for so long. He nods his thanks as the Baron passes him a shirt, not giving away anything as Brigette sits down across from him.

He accepts a bottle of whisky and holds Brigette’s eyes – she was there that day, standing in glorious guard and then descending on the corpse as Shadow had knocked him flying.

“Tell me.”

And she does.

It’s not everything, he can see that clearly, and she makes no effort to hide when glossing over something. But she does tell him what she knows. The house, the Morrigan, Wednesday and story-telling. When she gets to the potion he grits his teeth, furious.

She’d had it all there, ready to go, a new life to step into and none of this nonsense to weigh her down and instead she chose this shit, again.

He slams a hand on the table hard enough that the wood buckles. 

“The fuckin’ cunt just needed ta take her potio-“

"Don't.”

Brigette’s voice is low and fierce and there is a protective gleam in her eyes that makes him wonder what, exactly, she has been glossing over.

“You don't get to deride her choices, not when she worked so fucking hard for them.”

He is floored for a moment, frozen by the sharp stab of shame. 

His mind throws up an image of her leaping through the air, the focus on her face, the battle cry and desperation under it. 

Brigette leans back slightly, and he realises the Baron has moved to stand behind her, one hand grazing over her shoulder, a silent reminder of support. Samedi looks exhausted, his skin ashen, and Sweeney wonders what exactly they’ve been doing. He doesn’t get a chance to ask as she continues.

“You think you’re the only one with the power boost? With offerings and followers suddenly cropping up?”

He’s not, he knows that.

He has felt and heard as other gods and deities have found themselves remembered and reconsidered, felt the connections being made and new groundwork being laid, felt the impacts of belief and hope on the country.

“She did something bigger than you realise, than almost anyone could realise.” Brigette looks far away for a moment, and Baron’s hand tightens on her shoulder, though Sweeney can’t tell if it’s reassurance or a warning.

Brigette shakes her head.

“She wrote her story. Now get the fuck on with yours."

So he does.

He wanders, lets his feet take him where they want, and if sometimes they're willing to rest a little longer than they used to, if the curse that has plagued him for centuries seems to be battling with his newfound memory and original form, then so be it.

He finds the Morrigan in a gas station near Maine, her liquid eyes dark and wary, and he doesn't hold back. 

"You ever go into my hoard again-" 

"You were gone. Did you want Wednesday to take that point of power? Use it to wipe us all out?" 

He stares at her, knowing why she's made her choices, knowing the pain that came out of them. 

"We don't harvest hope."

He briefly considers taking her to the backstage, forcing her to yeild, laying down a lesson. He's senior, and though she is tripled and gaining power, he thinks he could still maintain the balance effectively enough. Instead he turns to leave, knows that the debt isn't his to collect and the one who is owed will never get the chance to call it in. 

Her voice stops him. 

"Fuair tú do chath. Cad é a dhéanfá ar bhealach difriúil?"

He looks up at the ceiling of the gas station with its fluorescent light that flickers eternally. What would he have done differently? Deny wanting to be alive again? Deny the power, the reality of having his magic back, of feeling his madness and memories colliding? 

What would be have done differently? 

"Ní dhéanfaidh aon ní. Gach rud. Rud ar bith. Ar a son." 

He is kept busy. There are offerings, something he hasn't had in so long it takes him a while to remember how to play his part. Sometimes they're small, from little souls, and those are his favourites. Their hopes are simpler ("i want to see a puppy" "I want to do well in my school play and not get laughed at" "I want Daddy to stop touching me"), and while he can't grant wishes, he can feel the threads of fate ready to be played, newfound belief giving him much more influence over the change in the song than he’s had in a long time.

A school play in a poor neighbourhood can get the windfall of some new costumes from the local theatre group, while other times it's easy enough to steal a puppy for a few hours, or beat the ever-loving shit out of someone in an alley way until they're so pulped up they can't drag themselves back home.

Simple stuff.

He has forgotten that feeling of being nourished by belief, of being strengthened and satisfied after creating improvements. Bowls of milk, candy, bread...it tastes like home, like prayer, and he consumes it with reverence rather than greed.

Other times the offerings come from harder places; teenagers with nowhere to go leaving coins in hats by cardboard beds. 

It's proportionate to the person - the more given, the more he can offer back. Sometimes the best he can give is some lucky chances that they need to take themselves, dropped brochures for local homeless shelters, and one time a pillow over the face of an old lady on her last legs whose family refused to let her go. 

Even these, though they're harder, are nourishing. 

He throws windfalls and brings chances under people’s noses and some they take, some they miss, but all are there and the belief continues strong and willing. 

His mind seems to hold itself together, at least a little. He's able to take his form at will, able to access the sun's treasure and be less exhausted by it. He remembers pulling her through and barely being able to cling to the railing of the bridge afterwards.

_Her screaming had only barely been drowned out by his own, the effort of keeping her from the hoard’s pull and making sure she didn’t see too many of his treasures draining him fast._

_“Quit yer squealin’.”_

_“Oh my god! Oh my god. Oh my god…that shit, that shit is so messed up. Oh your hoard is so messed up. What the fuck. Fuck.”_

_He’d clung to the railing and felt her eyes on him as he stared at the train, completely wiped and more than a little shaken at having taken someone through. He can’t remember when he’d last done that, if he’d ever done that. He can feel the strangest sensation of something being left with her, wonders if he’ll need to worry about that later._

_In his peripheral vision he can see he watching him and he swallows, hopes for once his face isn’t readable._

_She snaps off his cuffs, gives him a genuine smile and more genuine mockery, and he feels a bigger piece of him split and align to her like she’s a fucking compass._

_Cunt._

Before he had been wiped by it - now he can shift through at will provided he's kept busy enough.

He feels her sometimes, or thinks he does, or wants to. He doesn't fucking know. He just knows that when he's using lazy lines to pick up leggy blondes he can feel her eye roll at the back of his head (_dude, please come up with something even vaguely interesting, she wore fucking false eyelashes for this_). 

He knows he can feel her too strong and too small hands gripping at his wrists when he stands on the edge of bridges and wonders if he jumped he'd turn back into a bird (_don't you fucking dare_).

He knows that when he dreams he can find her most nights. Sometimes he dreams of what must have happened while he was gone, like watching a faded tape, unable to interact but unable to look away.

_She’s curled in a chair by a fireplace, reading from a massive book and occasionally smiling at Salim as she stops to share something. He can’t hear what they’re saying, only see the life on her face, one hand wrapped around a cup as she draws a laugh from Salim._

_He sees her tying a soft, pretty bow into her hair and adjusting a soft dress before walking towards a playground, the sunlight catching the shine of her hair as she settles herself on a bench and starts to speak._

_He sees her drinking whisky on the porch of that house with Shadow, sees them speaking quietly and looking more comfortable than he thinks he ever saw them before. There are no longing looks, but something companionable and warm._

_He sees her standing naked in front of the mirror in the hallway, running a finger over the seam of her autopsy stitches, a split that is only just beginning to reappear._

Other dreams are his own, or at least he thinks they are.

_Sometimes he’s back in that strip club, only this time her eyes are full of mockery and she kisses him like she has missed him._

_Sometimes he’s in a field full of white flowers, a time when he held her close._

_Sometimes he can feel her inside him, like she’s digging fingers through the sun’s treasure, and at times the Morrigan’s dark eyes watch hungrily as her hands pass gently over coins and then finally his spear._

The dreams leave him edgy and anxious, make him crave the bottle and battle, but the worst is one night only a few weeks after he rejoins reality.

_He is back in the Coq Noir the morning after their ill-fated night together, only this time she doesn’t lash out, this time she strokes a hand down his chest and takes him down an entirely different road._

_She doesn’t hesitate, reaching for him and giving over everything, taking and drinking and laughing and keening against him, the taste of her like ambrosia, his hands mapping her skin like it’s the last body he’ll ever touch. She is deliciously selfish and all too aware of what she wants, and he finds himself offering everything in the face of her honesty._

_She holds back nothing, open and wild and vulnerable, leaving him breathless, and as they both come down he stares. Her hair is damp with sweat, cheeks pink and eyes bright with life and something more. Her lips are red and swollen, jaw pink from where his beard has scratched her, and he knows the rest of her will be a mess of pale skin and pink bites and bruises._

_He’s never seen anything more beautiful, he thinks, and he wants to follow her to whatever unsuspecting place her decides to inflict her presence on, watch her fight and laugh and fuck her and take verbal and very real bites out of one another. _

_She kisses him lightly, softly, and there are tears in her eyes._

_“You were a truth, and I missed it. I miss you.”_

He wakes up gasping for air.

After that he stops sleeping, refusing to walk that road again.

***

When the restlessness inside him calms somewhat he'll wander his way down to the Coq Noir and spend a few days tending bar.

_The first time he’d come back Samedi had sat him down, left a plate of beignets in front of him and warned him to shut the fuck up for a few hours. He takes that as the welcome he deserved after last time (at least you didn’t have your spear this time, right?) and so he munches quietly._

_When Brigette appears, looking less exhausted and happier than she had last time, she takes in his appearance with a careful eye. The lack of sleep is probably weighing on his face but the intensity, the power there haven’t dimmed in the weeks between._

_She sees everything underneath, the restlessness and lack of sleep and the heavy, heavy grief, and she nods once. She knows, she always fucking knows, and passes him a dishtowel and tells him to get to work._

_So he does._

He likes the work, the noise is distracting, and the nights late enough that nobody cares if he doesn’t sleep. Mostly it's tending bar, other times he'll do odd jobs, relying on the craft and luck that is so much stronger to fix plumbing, tend to building issues. 

It doesn't go unnoticed, and when he wanders he'll sometimes be called in with offers of a hot meal to ply his trade. 

In the day time he lets his feet take him, responds to offerings and finds opportunities to play with luck, touches the sunlight and pulls it into shapes. He struggles at times to reconcile all of him, tries to focus less on how the parts fit together and instead take what he can from being able to have the parts at all.

He thinks occasionally about going back to Virginia, knows the ground is fertile with belief and sacrifice, knows he could heal further there and perhaps find a way to rest. He knows if he went back she would be there, haunting that house, and he would have to confront the enormity of her choices, her decisions and their impact on the landscape of gods and the country itself.

He stays far away, and ignores the pull in his gut.

He never stays any place long, and a part of him wonders whether home was ever meant to be a place to begin with. 

***

He's been back a day or two, put immediately to work to deal with tourist season, and using the bar as a different kind of hunting ground.

He can’t sleep, and the energy is making him manic. So he looks for other ways to burn it off.

If either of the Loa have anything to say about the steady stream of tourists and locals who pass through his room and leave the next morning, they say nothing. If they notice a preference for taller women, for wild black waves or coiled kinks or bright blondes or fiery red heads or anything that's not brown waves, for curves or muscles over thin bodies or small figures, they say nothing.

If they see his exhaustion they have, so far, said nothing.

Perhaps if enough hands pass over him they’ll wipe away the imprints she’s left on his body, his being, his mind. He knows, every morning, that it’s futile; knows she’s a tattoo on him and that until those shards disappear and his memory is once more a faded, splintered thing he will continue to be owned by someone no longer in existence.

No matter how hard he tries, he cannot outrun the offering between atoms that brought him back to being, cannot shut out her mocking eyes or reckless laugh and that sweet, out of place smile.

_“Where the fuck have you been?”_

He can feel it creeping over him, the need to sleep. It’s not that gods have human needs, it’s that _he_ does. That’s always been a part of his curse, his being – sleep, and sex, and food, and drink. He’s closer to Loa than he is to Mama-Ji; a deity, a magical creature, a fae God-king but never so far removed that he could pretend to be separate. Even now with so much more of himself intact, he is not separate, has always relied on interaction.

He needs sleep.

Everything has a price.

It has been weeks, maybe months, and his feet are beginning to drag.

He thinks he sees her, sometimes, standing in corners of the bar with milky white eyes and a body lined in woad.

He blinks and wonders if he’s being haunted, knows deep down it’s just the lack of sleep that is getting to him so severely.

He wishes he was being haunted.

***

The woman he's with bites at his shoulder as he opens the door to the back room.

"Uh uh, no, get on outta here baby, he has an appointment."

The woman shoots him a look but he's already distracted, glaring down at Brigette and wondering if she'll give him a fight at least if he can't get laid, wanting to expend this excess energy and avoid nightmares.

His would be bed mate flounces away and neither of them spare her a glance. Brigette pushes him into the room and onto the bed. 

"You need sleep."

He shakes his head and he sees her hand twitch and wonders whether she's going to slap him. Might not be the worst thing... 

Instead she passes him a whisky and he's not stupid enough to think she hasn't drugged it, but he's thirsty and raw and just got cock blocked so he drinks deeply. 

"Don't want sleep...don't wanna see her."

She nods, taking the glass from him, and when he realises it was just whisky he sighs and lays backwards.

"I know, chere. But you ain't gonna last like this."

It’s not true and they both know it. The offerings continue unabated, each twist of like and restringing of fate yielding more, and other gods are seeing the same. More and more and more; far from faded, now he is more solid and real than ever before.

He is quiet for a moment.

“She wanted to live.”

Brigette nods and answers as if it’s a question.

“In the end, she did. Think it took her a while to see that as somethin’ outside of revenge.”

He thinks about her, about how while alive she had been living in so many lies, especially to herself. About bug spray and reckless decisions and her need for validation that, as soon as it was met, became a burden.

_"She doesn't want to be dead."_

_"Dead gets a bad rap."_

_"I don't want her to be dead."_

Not wanting to be dead is very, very different to wanting to live. He exhales and feels an ache in his bones, hears the flatness of his voice as he speaks. 

“You knew. Back when we first came here, you knew how I...that there was something.”

She strokes a hand over his face, light and gentle.

“You brought her here, you know what we’re about. If it was just you it would've been funny to watch the fallout."

He chuckles at her unashamed manipulation, knows she's deliberately making him laugh before she stops agakn

"She wanted her potion...girl had ta face her truth somehow.”

“Tá sí imithe.”

She's gone. 

It hurts to say it out loud and yet he's older than old, has seen many many many gone before. He remembers them now, mostly. Eorann and Moira visiting him in the trees, Essie growing old and still so very beautiful, followers dwindling and disappearing. Even as he starts to gain more now, starts to connect with and obsess over them in a way he hasn't been able to in years, that gaping hole is still there. 

She's gone. 

Brigette doesn’t speak at first, and the silence stretches long enough that he opens an eye, sees her staring off into the distance as if listening for something.

She nods and speaks quietly. 

“Tá Laura Moon imithe.”

When she looks back at him he feels the prickle on his neck that warns him of dissembling, but he cannot pick her words apart, and before he can respond she’s lighting her cigar.

The smoke plumes over him and he gives up, inhales deeply, and feels his mind begin to shut down. For a moment he wonders if this is a merciful act on her part, or if the Loa have another reason for wanting him knocked out tonight.

The thought comes and goes quickly, and then he is sinking down, down, down.

"Bon nuit."

When he finally succumbs to sleep it takes him hard, without mercy, cutting straight to the quick as if to punish him for staying away for so long. 

_He is back._

_As he registers the neon lighting, the thumping music, the hallway leading to the private room, he begins to shake._

_He cannot be back here._

_Not where he stayed for what felt like millennia, repeating and repeating and repeating, a kind of cold torture. _

_His feet have other plans, taking him step by painful step down the hallway, until he finds himself sitting in that chair once again._

_The music slows, quiets, and he waits for Eorann to appear._

_Instead, it is something else._

_It it familiar and foreign. _

_Bathed in blue neon light, her eyes so milky white they seem to glow, her ribs on display and autopsy lines carved across her body in blue woad. She's hard to look at, an unearthly illumination as her white dress billows around her and her mocking smile tells him he'll be haunted and leaves him willing to be. _

_This is not Laura Moon._

_This is something else._

_He stands, approaches the stage as the being in front of him shifts._

_It changes and then there she is, thin and tense and realer than real, eyes flashing. She is naked and unashamed in her exposure, and the second she takes him in she is stalking to the edge of the stage, all angry energy and snapping mouth. He doesn't wait long for her to spit her venom in his direction._

_"Where the fuck have you been?" _

_Fuck it, he's here, he might as well give himself over. _

_He grabs her wrist, pulling her against him, watching her for any hesitation or refusal and finding only impatience._

_She doesn't wait, kisses him hard and roughly, humming pleasurably against his mouth even as her teeth nip at his lips. Boney arms wrap quickly around his neck and he pulls her tighter against him, feels cool skin and the softness of her hair. _

_He feels himself hard and wanting, feels her shifting against him, and he steps back to land on the chair as she writhes in his lap. _

_She runs her fingers up his jaw, over his neck, into his hair. _

_He feels something changing._

_He feels those fingers stroking, stroking, stroking over his face, his hair, his chest and somehow he can feel then shifting and clawing inside of him_ until suddenly he is awake and still feeling them, not on his body, but inside his mind or somewhere like it.

Scratching, stroking, skimming lightly on the edges of his awareness. Feels his treasures shifting and being searched through until he feels them hit the coin, his coin, The Coin. 

An intruder. 

A theif. 

He sits bolt upright, his spear in hand and body blazing all too quickly without his usual restraint or memory loss to hold it back and then he is standing, vision clouded red and voice heavy with battlelust.

"Someone's in my _fucking_ hoard."


	21. Chapter 21

_"What happens when the gods themselves believe?"_

The last of the magic drains out of her body, the last shreds of sparkle dissolve in her veins, and she feels herself shuffling lose the mortal coil.

And then Laura McCabe is dead.

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP to its friends) is the delightful chemical compound that provides energy to drive the necessary processes of living cells. For the everyday person this includes muscle contractions, hormonal reactions and chemical synthesis. It is perhaps best considered the molecular unit of currency – if you want to _be_, you need ATP.

For the everyday person, death means their body is no longer taking in the oxygen required to make ATP, and though their body will then turn to anaerobic glycosis to continue production, this doesn’t last long. When glycogen is depleted, the ATP concentration diminishes, and the body is unable to undertake the functions required for muscles to relax. Instead, they stiffen.

This, dear children, is known as rigor mortis.

If it sounds familiar, and no doubt it does, this is the third of eight stages of death. By any reasonable person’s count (and aren’t we all just feeling oh so reasonable), our little Laura Moon has shifted between stages, most frequently finding herself in putrefaction.

For the everyday person, by the time their body has putrefied, any semblance of the inhabitant is entirely aesthetic – their essence, soul, life force, being, whatever special term is used to capture the concept of complex existence, is gone. Shot through realities to find itself in front of whatever judge or jury the universe, in its complex and deity-discerning wisdom, aligns for it.

Laura is not an everyday person.

Laura has been a mess of reanimated flesh and fixed existence, somehow both frozen and rapidly decomposing, her soul having spent some time housed in this awakened but not strictly alive meat sack. She has existed as a being beyond ATP, powered by something older and far more complex than the organic chemical currency of the everyday.

The first time Laura died she had been a being of flesh and blood and existence, listening to Robbie’s awful humming and then suddenly being flung most unceremoniously from the car. Her essence had separated neatly and cleanly from the ATP dependent flesh, with all its processes and synapses and glorious mess, and arrived near instantly on the other side of existence in much the same fashion as most of the population.

In the space of a moment she had gone from the agony of existence to opening her eyes in a new reality, alone and stripped back to nothingness.

The gloriously deep hot tub, oh so bleak can of Git Gone perched on the edge, had awaited.

_"In life you believed in nothing. You will go to nothing. You will be done. There will be darkness."_

The first time Laura died, she was an everyday person.

And now?

Now…things are different.

Things have changed.

The essence of what makes Laura, _Laura_, and what made her a being of existence, housed in a body animated only by the grace of the sun’s treasure and all too quickly fading, has shifted. There are parts that weren't there before, forged not in biological development but through magical intervention, through belief, through something beyond the magnificently mundane call and response that makes up an everyday human.

There are new parts. 

Parts comprised of magic spilling over your tongue and spreading a story. Parts composed of a multitude of gods seeing you obliterate the god of war. Parts conducive to something wild and extraordinary.

These parts, young and fresh and tender, could easily have been left behind to collapse into the darkness.

_It’s faint._

_Barely noticeable._

_No one, god or human alike, would normally be able to see it._

_But they are not gods. Nor humans._

_They are death Loa, they hear the call of the graveyard in the air, and they see the barest gleam to the rotting muscle. A glow in the sinew._

Unless someone collected them. 

There's no neat shift from one reality to the next this time. 

There is no clean transition.

Laura can feel nothing. 

Laura can feel everything. 

Laura is being sucked away, drawn away, flung away. 

Laura is being carried, hurtling towards infinity. 

Laura is surrounded by darkness and a darker darkness and the darkest of darkness and spirits and light.

Laura is flung throughout the spectrum of existence and feels her being trying to come apart, stripped back until all that is left is her essence for judging. 

Only now, she is held together.

She is held so tightly, so safely, as a cackling, wild laughter echoes around her. She feels pieces of being that want to break away captured and contained against her. 

The pressure builds and then shifts as her soul tries to splinter and she is held tighter and tighter, the atoms of her being struggling to pass through death and something holding her together by a thread. 

"Hold on."

The voice is serene and calm and familiar and she wants to tell it to fuck off, that she's in pain that she has suffered enough, that this isn't the nothing she was promised. 

Her bones that are not bones ache, her skin that is not skin is on fire, her lungs fill with nothing and the nothing chokes her.

She is anything and everything all at once. 

And then, it stops. 

Everything stops. 

She opens her eyes that are once again eyes and the expanse of gloaming twilight stares back at her, an aurora borealis over an inky black sky, and the path to her next place clear ahead.

She looks around at the familiar landscape. She doesn't remember that pain last time, the feeling of being cradled and dragged all at once, as if something had fought to keep more of her together than was meant to be shot through the darkness. 

Still, she's back in the same place. 

Laura sighs. 

"Fuck."

She looks down at her body, unsurprised to find herself almost naked, the white dress she died in little more than scraps of fabric fluttering around her. She traces pale skin and runs her fingers over her ribs and hips. Not the rotting corpse she was, now whole and smooth, and she smiles to herself. 

“If you gotta go…”

It’s a sad little boost to her vanity, but she’ll take what she can get.

She feels something then, a tingle, uncomfortable and then gone in an instant. 

She sees a dark figure ahead and knows her scales are waiting. She remembers this place intimately, her brief time here setting in motion so much insanity. He promised, she knows that, saw him stalking the edges of the battlefield to reclaim her as he’d sworn to do.

_"When you are done I will complete my task...and deliver you on to darkness."_

Asshole.

She can see the table with metal up ahead, see the hot tub waiting for her. She wonders if her heart will be black with decay when he pulls it from her chest.

She twitches, thinks she hears something. 

_“Bring the grapes, Annie!”_

She feels a prickling itch that seems out of place. 

She ignores it.

A mist has begun to build, a strange smoke that seems to move and shift without any breeze, curling and writhing its way towards the table. 

In the distance she hears a little voice. It's reedy and thin and she can't tell where it's coming from, only feel the whispering intensity of it.

_"No, she looked like a dead person but mama the stories!" _

She flinches as something scratches across her skin. 

Or...not across...under.

_“Gotta be quiet if you want her to come. Gotta listen.”_

It is gone and back and gone in an instant, a sharp pinprick. 

She stares at her hand where she’d felt the sensation and sees the strangest mote of pure, bright light. It’s as if a needle has punctured out a round of skin no wider than an eyelash, and a pale blue light within is piercing through.

Her attention is diverted by the voices up ahead.

"She will return as she was meant to."

Gravelly and serious, firm and clear and familiar.

And not alone.

"The circumstances of her death committed you last time, I understand that. But this ain't the same show, mon frère, an' you know it."

The rising mists part and shift and she realises there are now two of them, standing in front of the scales. The first wears a plain black coat, and though he is far away she would recognise him anywhere.

_“Death is not a debate. How many do you think have come before you? All with promises and threats and offers of glory, gold, love? How are you to misguide me from my duty? You are but a man, not even one I should remember. You will go into the darkness, and I will forget ever having met you.”_

Anubis is ready and waiting and though tired, Laura cannot quite resist the urge to shoot him a smile, a shrug, as a final, unforgettable fuck you.

He ignores her brattish gesture and speaks to the other figure with irritation beyond her mockery.

"You claim her?" 

If the first voice is serious, the second is smooth and amused, charming. 

"Non, but my kè mwen, my fierce Maman would not be pleased if you were to send her to the abyss."

The second figure is tall and dark, made taller by a top hat. Shadows curl and swirl at its feet like smoky cats winding their way around ankles.

Anubis is unmoved.

"She will not reach the abyss this time. That was before - now there is more that awaits her."

If he is disappointed that her end is more complex than before, he hides it well.

The taller figure shrugs elegantly, waving a dismissive hand.

"You're assumin' you know the end to that tale. Ain’t just mortal flesh that came through this time."

Anubis does not respond to his companion, instead staring as she approaches his scales.

She feels it again, that strange itch, as if something is prickling along her skin, as if a part of her is not really fully here and her body is mourning its absence. She knows without looking that another tiny mote of light has appeared at her wrist, and swallows.

Anubis holds her gaze as he finally speaks to the other entity. 

"She is here - this is her end. What excess you have dragged through with her will fall away amongst the stars and the wind."

The other man has his back to Laura but as she steps closer she realises his chuckle is familiar. He's wearing a top hat and holding an ornate black came, the mists continuing to lap at him. 

"She stood too close to the story. That comes at a cost." 

He turns.

The Baron, half his face now a sinister skull with eyes aflame, is tall and strong and terrifying. In life he was a handsome man with mischief in his eyes; here he is spitfire and rebellion and wicked laughter to Anubis' solemn gravitas.

He is comfortable in this place, and she realises she didn’t spend much time thinking about death Loa even while being fucked by one. Now it’s like her vision has shifted and she sees layers previously unnoticed.

She sees the graveyard on him, hears the drums around them, and he thrums with power. As he moves towards her the shadows, spirits and souls alike, follow him. She feels an unfamiliar sensation, like she owes something.

She steps towards him to ask what the fuck is happening, why he’s here, but stops as another voice picks up.

_“She knows all the stories, Pop, and she got magic too!”_

She winces as that feeling strikes her again, like a shard of her has splintered somewhere else, another pinprick of light glancing across her skin.

Another, and then another, joining in a ghostly, echoing whirl that sends shards across her body.

_"She pulled a coin from the air Dad, no sleeves, it was amazing!"_

_"If you're very good the story teller will find you."_

For a second she is not here in this twilight place, but somewhere else. She sees a park bench with something on it, there and gone in an instant before she returns.

Anubis stares and the Baron’s smile is full of sly secrets.

The voices continue and she feels the splintering.

Some of the voices are high and sweet, belief and knowledge in every word, while others are older and more suspicious, fuelled by hope and connection.

_"She was so scary, Ma...her eyes are all milky like a dead thing."_

Each word sends more sharp pinpricks of pain across her as pieces of her are punctured out, more and more motes of light appearing, neon blue and glowing.

She is in a playground, this one small and well-loved with a wall of graffiti nearby, a thin boy with dark curls holding a younger child in his arms.

_“You want another story?”_

She is back in the twilight place, gasping.

"You see? She ain't yours, mon ami...she ain't any of ours."

The Baron's voice has the timbre of a proclamation, and she begins to shake. 

Laura glances down to where her body, bare and pale in the echoing dusk, seems to shift as more and more light appears. 

She is at another playground, this one covered in snow, a bunch of grapes on a cleared section of the bench.

_“Please come back, I wanna hear about the spider again.”_

She wants those grapes, wants to tell them about Anansi and the python, feels an urge like insatiable hunger, like a thirst only they can quench. She wants to take and have them listen and give to them what they are asking.

She is back in the twilight and wants to crawl out of her skin.

"She belongs to them now."

She barely registers the satisfaction in the Baron’s voice as he continues, can barely hear him as more voices enter her mind, tugging on her attention until she is desperate to answer them.

_"The dead lady haunts playgrounds."_

_"If you're good and listen quietly, she'll give you a coin. Bring her grapes."_

_"If you're not, she'll steal your skin to buy herself more time."_

_“I wanna hear the story my tio used to tell us, please.”_

She is thrown from place to place, shards of her splintering away, layers of her being shifting to each place, slices of her frantic to heed calls. She thinks a little girl with red hair must see her for a moment, gasping, but it passes too quickly before she is flung once again into the twilight, landing on her knees as tears pour down her face.

She has never wanted, needed, desired anything like being there with their eyes on her, their ears open. She feels as if part of her being is tied to them, dependent on them, fears not meeting their needs.

Not all of the voices are young, and it is the older ones, and then the ancient ones that do the most damage.

_“My little Natya heard you tell it the other day…I have not heard since coming here. Please.”_

_“The dead girl with gold on her tongue spins her tales and shares her grapes with her special few.”_

This pain, this pull is unlike anything she has ever encountered, narrowing her vision and shifting her neurons. 

The voices are merging and blending and then she hears others joining the chorus, these ones laced with power and compounded with faith. 

_“She raided the sun’s treasure to destroy the god of war.”_

_“Braided and boosted until all were stronger, all survived, all knocked back the New Gods and their coup.”_

_"She tore a God back from death to answer her battle cry."_

These voices seemed to punch massive parts out of her, and the pain makes her voice shake as she turns to them. She feels like something is rewiring her insides, like her soul is being ripped and restitched, like she is being rebuilt, reborn. She feels layered and strengthened and hungry unlike anything she has ever felt.

“What…w-what the _f-fuck_ is happening?”

Laura stares as her pale hands begin to disappear in the face of the light. She holds them up and sees through them, of them, around them. Behind them Anubis stares and the Baron tilts his head, taking her in with a look of satisfaction.

The Baron addresses Anubis, not her.

"You know humans - they'll make what they need."

The god’s serious face is confused, angry.

"This is not how we come into being!" 

The Baron laughs and Laura feels something hissing and spitting within her.

“This weren’t no accident, zanmi, the strings were pulled together.”

She can't concentrate as the pain, the burning continues to build and shake her being. 

The Baron's voice is in front of her, behind her, all around her, while Anubis' solemn tone is a promise and a warning. 

"You got a choice now, Laura Moon."

"Come with me to your rest."

"Little little Laura Moon, lost and found on higher ground."

She gasps as the mist engulfs her, the pain blurring her vision so that everything around her is clouded in wisps of smoke and secrets as they twine and swirl.

She hears Anubis, his deep voice calm and strong and oddly calming.

“You have a choice. You can finish now.” 

“Or, little moon girl, you can answer their calls.”

There is a glee and anticipation in the Baron’s tone that sets her teeth on edge.

Her vision clears and she sees her next world.

She stares at the cover of the hot tub, remembers the stifling panic that overwhelmed her so completely it silenced the dissatisfaction, sparked life into her otherwise dull and deadened emotions, making her feel things she wouldn't truly connect with again until she woke in her coffin.

The Baron gestures behind her and she turns to see another door, this one crackling and shifting as if unstable, narrower than a normal door and shrinking in size rapidly.

She feels her atoms hum and shift and feels veins and threads of knowledge, rich with belief, forging new pathways and connections where previously there was only decay. She feels burnt away, turned to smoke and haze, feels every bone echo and reverberate as if by clanging metal.

She gets a second of clarity, crystalline clear.

A moment is given, and she feels it being given. The universe has briefly softened and is willing to be moulded by the story, willing to answer the heart cries being sent out with such intense, collective longing, but it will not last. 

Stories fade. 

The malleable universe will harden once more, barely held open long enough for atoms and magic and belief to thread and twine and twirl and blend into something new. 

She has a choice. 

_To rest, to drift, to discover her next stage. To give herself over to the safety, sanctity of the next stage of existence and discover what newness now awaits her. She has given and given and given, she can slip into somnambulant twilight and float away to the next space._

She has a choice. 

_Pain and existence and chains made of belief and adventure and life. Leashed by their purpose and their lore. She can find herself free and bound, above and below, at their mercy and at their joy, to spread and shift and spill out over the world. To continue the story. _

She is nothing if not selfish.

She makes her choice. 

She grits her teeth and turns, sprinting towards the door as it shrinks tighter and tighter and leaps through it.

The universe hardens around the new reality, and she is no more.

She feels her body heave and shift as blue lines cross her chest like autopsy scars. 

It's like electricity crackling across her, inside her, around her. The pressure of being splintered and rebuilt with something other than ATP and oxygen, the stardust of her mortal body replaced bit by bit with belief and hope and offering and more than a little fear. 

On some level she is aware of the Baron and Anubis watching her closely from the other side of the door but she cannot see them, hear them, feel them, only knows that they exist and this is the way in which they are currently existing.

She is out of herself, in another place and time, another reality made only of pain and endless, soundless screams. 

She screams as she feels herself gone and returned and the same and altered all at once. She screams as she is reforged and rebuilt and reclaimed by an uncaring universe responding to processes forged long before ATP began to fuel life forms. She screams as she is rendered anew.

And just like that, it stops. 

Laura Moon is long gone.

She opens her eyes.


	22. Chapter 22

Laura opens her eyes.

Well, not quite.

Opening her eyes would imply a deliberate and standard action of one waking from slumber.

This is more like layers of infinite existence crystallising into a single being and that being now being able to see in the reality in which she has found herself.

For one moment she is adrift, and then she is anchored, feels her existence inexplicably tied to something, cemented and grounded and moored into something she knows instinctively to be hers. It melds against her, flesh barely held together with shreds of belief, but it’s enough to contain her otherwise intangible being and let her stand solid in this reality, exist and shape it as necessary.

She can feel a familiar thread of faith throughout the mass that was once gore and is now part of her being, taste the weight and density of belief offered wholly and unconditionally, the weight of a vigil held.

She stares at the white ceiling, the slightly peeling plaster she saw every morning for her last month of life, the same reassuring edge letting her know where she is.

She sits up on the bed and looks down at her hands, the way they flicker between forms, skeletal and then flesh. A memory, threaded through the remains that have helped to anchor her, makes her smile.

_“What the fuck are you? I mean, what the fuck are any of you? But first, tell me what the fuck you are. Seriously, what the fuck are you?”_

Another life, another time, another moment of disbelief and anger and frustration at a world that was insistent on not doing as she wanted it to do. She knows now how impossible that question really was; for him, for her, for any of them.

Now, though, now she knows what she is.

The knowledge has settled into her chest, her blood, her being. She knows there is a call in her veins demanding she answer, imploring her to attend, and she is all too pleased to do so. She knows her place and her space and she knows why they call.

_“You things are not gods, by the way. You’re made by people. People who need answers and they’re too fucking lazy to look for them themselves.”_

She was wrong. She can see that. And also incredibly right.

She knows how she exists and to whom she is accountable, she knows the belief that threads and binds her together has been hard won and will be harder kept, gleaned as it was from little souls full of magic and older souls with blushing hope. She knows that it wasn’t laziness that called her into being, that forged and bloomed her; it was hope.

So much hope, wild and whispering and shy and intense, that found another place to go.

And this, she finds, is a kind of knowledge she has never quite had before. An awareness of the vulnerability, the openness, the willingness to let oneself want something so deeply without proof of its existence. In life she remembers finding that repugnant, ridiculous…now she depends on it.

She supposes there’s an irony, but she can’t bring herself to mind.

She is no god. But she is here.

She stands and walks to the large mirror at the far wall, studying it for a moment.

Laura is sure it had not been here when she last woke in this house but knows better than to think the house doesn’t have its own grand designs. She strokes the wall and smiles, unperturbed by the fact that the belief holding it together is not wholly belonging to her.

It is good to be back.

Or be here. Was she really here before? Is she the same at all?

Laura turns to the mirror and stares.

She sees herself, sees every part of what she is, what they dreamed into existence when enough of them felt that belief and hope and sent it out to the uncaring universe. She inhales deeply and exhales, watches herself flicker and shift.

There is no weight of decay but she can see the death on her, see the lore that has pulled her into being was inextricably tied to her undead, unloving state as she had shared those stories.

She runs her hands over her bare skin, feels the warmth there, the contrast of softness against her sharp hipbones. She can feel the hum within her system, the thrum in her veins, the thumping tattoo of her existence in her ears.

Not alive, she knows that, though the knowledge doesn’t fill her with the same deep exhaustion and dread that it once had.

Not alive, but existing, and so very close to it that she can’t really get any closer.

Just to the right of alive.

She concentrates on herself, pulls into this reality a more human, more familiar form, and feels the rest shift into the background until it needs to be seen.

She hears a gasp in the doorway and turns.

***

Ostara watches Bilquis with a kind of awe. It's not that gods weren't traditionally creative - plenty of them have had to adapt, her own successful partnership with Media clear evidence of that. 

But this. 

To fashion something out of grit and steel and death. 

To nudge and angle and carefully lay seeds.

To water them with unsuspecting hope, barely realised belief, to yield faith from faithless. 

To see them bloom. 

Bilquis stands at the head of the table, Mama-Ji to her left, Anansi to her right. They're not quite backstage, having instead lowered themselves to the Loa's graveyard, a mist shrouded table set for death and delight.

At the other end of the table Baron Samedi lounges comfortably, an arm around Maman Brigette, who watches the table with wary eyes and a sly smile. The Loa are in their element, the death and sex in the air setting everybody slightly on edge. To the Baron’s left, sneering and defiant, a gap-toothed New god refuses to sully himself with the food, remaining partially intangible but listening nonetheless. 

Shadow Moon, having been called and answered with his usual mix of suspicion and willingness, refuses to sit. He stands for now, occasionally pacing, and while Ostara knows he's too green in his own power to understand all the ramifications, she can see a dawning wonder behind his wary eyes. 

He's not alone. 

Ostara watches Anansi stare at his Queen with a reverence gods rarely display, and wonders how it took them all so long to see what the trickster has always known. 

_What happens when the gods themselves believe?_

Their gathering is strange, gods and deities and magic all around. When asked about the absence of the recently risen madman Brigette shakes her head.

"Better he sleep first."

He voice brooked no argument, and if Ostara thought perhaps the Irishman would take umbridge with the lack of invitation, the concern was weighed against the knowledge that he likely wouldn't have stayed long anyway.

The wine has been poured and the pleasantries exchanged and then Bilquis, with her understated smile and gleaming eyes, had told them. 

Mama-ji can't stop the words any more than she can keep the shock from her voice. 

“... it worked?”

Ostara wants to laugh - it's the understatement of the century. 

Bilquis smiles.

“A strange girl with a raconteur’s tongue, a dead girl that tells faery tales, a magic woman pulling coins from the air. A young woman in white with warnings, grapes and hope to share. The stories spread and threads connected.”

They have all heard the snippets, of course. There are always snippets - stories start out that way. But this is deliberate, calculated. This is a story that bore more stories, and story that spread stories, a story that stood too close to the story.

This is no haunting, no lost soul.

This is something new. 

***

Salim stares at the empty bed.

He has stepped into this room hundreds of times in the last few months.

Sometimes he has been singing.

Salim is not much of a singer, but he has spent many months humming tunelessly, remembering that she had liked music, liked to close her eyes and listen to the radio as they drove from place to place. He remembers her throaty, sweet voice and wonders if she can find comfort in this.

Usually he has been fast.

Every morning he has come in and opened the curtains. As the weather warmed he began to open the balcony door to let in breezes. Once a week he replaced the flowers on the bedside table with fresh ones from the valley below.

Once a week he came in with a book from the library

He read aloud, though in the mess of glowing, rippling remains that shifted in and out of existence it was difficult to isolate something that could be an ear. 

He had a particularly memorable afternoon curled in a chair near the balcony reading aloud from a book of poetry. What Salim lacks in singing skill, he makes up for in a stunningly slow, gentle pace. The words had wrapped around the room, dipping and slipping and shifting.

“I too walked in the valley of darkness  
A lonely path filled with nothing but emptiness  
Drowning in solitude of sadness  
The current pulled me down into a phase of madness  
God knows how much I was searching for love and tenderness  
To dance in a melody of kindness  
Snatching me away from the deep water of bitterness”

He had smiled when he saw the shadow in the hallway moved, made a note that even the Jinn could not deny the open, honesty beauty of Nasra Al Adawi.

He has come into this room a hundred times and swallowed down his mild horror every time he looked at the bed.

And now it is empty.

He turns towards the mirror where she is standing.

What he sees there is foreign and familiar all at once.

What had only five minutes earlier been a pile of gleaming, glistening gore, oddly corporeal and simultaneously so decimated any comparisons to humanity seemed inappropriate, is now whole.

Complete.

Inhuman.

The being shifts, slips off parts of itself to reveal another face, one with which he is much more familiar.

A painfully human one.

He gasps as he takes in the sight of her, her strange eyes and her body bare, her familiar smile and hands resting on skinny hips as if to say, “well?”

A beat passes.

Salim stares and then crumples.

What happens next is private.

It is the breaking down and giving over of oneself to emotions that had, perhaps, until that moment been held in check by a sense of duty. It is what happens when pain finally stops, or a fever breaks, or you are finally able to sit still after a long time in motion.

It is the feeling of overwhelming reprieve coupled with the intense satisfaction of faith met and answered, of belief believed, of a vigil held for long months with little end in sight and no one able to shed much light.

It happens on the bed, where his body has collapsed forward and she has caught him.

She holds him very, very tightly, unwilling to let a moment of this be unabsorbed, unacknowledged, or unappreciated. It is entirely out of character for her, disinclined as she is towards being someone’s soft place to fall so much as their sharp corner to land on, and she knows that part of herself is still very much intact. For anyone else in the world she would offer seconds and move on; for Salim, she has an eternity.

It is a deep outpouring of relief and the sweetest sensation of emptiness, and it is occurring in the sunlit room of the house. If walls could talk, these ones would still be silent, because walls of houses such as this are all too aware of the cost and gain of these magical moments.

It is very quiet, and very still, and the two figures hold one another very, very close.

We'll give them their privacy, and re-join them later.

Later, he will take some deep and shaky breaths. He will register that he is, yet again, holding on very tight to a naked woman. He will offer to get her a robe and she will laugh, genuine and bright, at his stammer.

Later, they find themselves down stairs.

She accepts the robe he offers but not the towel, refusing to wipe the tears from her neck. They dry against her skin and she can feel them seeping into the layers of her being, hopes she can hold them close to her forever.

She lets him chatter as he makes them both tea in the kitchen, tries to process being back here.

She exists.

_She shifts for a moment, called to a bench near a national park by an elderly woman missing her husband and the stories he had told her of Nanook and the great bears._

_The words are a part of Laura’s threads now, and they spill into the air of the otherwise still forest as the woman rests her head on the table with a smile._

Just as suddenly, she is back, accepting a cup of his too strong coffee.

Salim talks about the garden, herbs, the books he’s been reading to her. He talks about the Jinn and the valley and all the flowers. She lets his babble flow around her, hold her up, curling into a chair as the robe pools around her. It is soft against her skin.

She can feel memories throughout the flesh of his voice reading, chattering away, singing off key or bustling about cleaning. She struggles with the feeling of tangibility and ephemerality, wondering if she will always be in this liminal space.

_She feels a part of herself splinter away to a basketball court behind a library and amuses herself by nudging open a book of fairy tales for the little boy leaving her grapes._

Laura is back and tucking greedily into sweet halwa as Salim grows quiet, letting himself smile at the sight of her.

They stare at one another for a moment, simply enjoying the sight of the other in the early morning sunlight.

She finishes the last of her halwa with a soft hum of pleasure as she registers the rich cardamom, almond, and floral sweetness of the rose water. From being unable to taste anything but the ash of her decaying mouth to this is nothing short of bliss, and she lets herself feel every second of it.

And then the house begins to shake.

***

"How?"

Technical Boy’s whole demeanour is on edge, eyes full of irritation and, more subtly, fear. He’s uncomfortable with his inability to undertake the calculations, to identify the motivations, to quantify the impact of this development.

Bilquis is quiet for a moment.

How to explain to him, or anyone, what it means to seek worship through love? How to articulate that when disconnection threatens everything, returning people to their shared narratives is an act of unification?

Anansi cuts across the table in his storytelling twang, for once free of mockery, but intense nonetheless.

“You ever truly thought about what creates us? What sustains us?" 

Technical Boy is unimpressed with the hint of sermon, leaning forward.

“Cut the shit, arachnid.”

Anansi’s smile is pointed.

"We are the result of humans, in their delicate and traumatic mortality, feeling so strongly, so deeply, so powerfully that the atoms of existence themselves must find somewhere to keep the story, to react to their agony and ecstasy. We focus on belief and worship, but think about what seeds us in the first place."

Technical Boy looks ready to start another war but Bilquis’ voice, calm and firm, silences him.

“Love.”

She holds his gaze and begins to walk slowly around the table.

"Love of war, of profit, of people. Love of violence born of love of power. Love crying out for hope, calling out for trickery and revolution to hold power in check. Love of life, love of others turning into fear that calls out for the warm arms of protection. A love of intimacy, of touch, of desire. Love of life calling for harvest, seeking control over the weather, love of existence calling out for knowledge and understanding."

She pauses for a moment before looking to the Loa.

"Even those of us guiding the dead through their final motions are born of love; loss and grief require a starting point, a place of great connection from which disconnection can be mourned. Love demands they not walk those roads alone."

She stands behind the New god, runs a hand over the polyester of his latest fashion statement, smiles at the tension in him as she leans down speak softly in his ear as Nancy smirks.

"Even you - born of the human drive to progress and innovate and learn...even you were born of love."

She moves away and the reality of her actions is finally clear. Ostara watches others process the ramification of the goddess of love having harnessed and threaded together hope and belief, having strategically set in place events that create something born of love.

_What happens when the gods themselves believe?_

***

When Laura tries to put the plate on the table she is rocked by a wave of nausea, the porcelain shattering against the floor. The house tilts before her eyes as if bucking her onto something. In her peripheral vision she sees Salim’s concerned face, feels a flash of relief that he is not being impacted, quickly passing as her panic sets in.

Her hands grip the table as she feels herself splintering not in answer to a call or offering, but as if being pushed by something else.

The chair under her disappears and then _the pole is cold behind her and she waits for her eyes to adjust to the neon lights. _

_When they do adjust, she takes a steadying breath._

_The room shifts and she’s back in the strip club, standing on the stage. It smells of smoke, the sickly sweet scent of too many drinks spilled, the cloying heat of sweat beyond the doorway._

_She ignores it all and looks straight ahead._

_He’s sitting on the chair in front of the stage like it’s a throne, eyes of fire and spear by his side, and she feels a thrill of excitement singing across her skin, a relief within her at the sight of him._

_She pushes away her true form, lets herself be human and watches as he stands too slowly for her liking. _

_"Where the fuck have you been?"_

_He doesn’t bother responding, pulling her tightly to him, warm and solid and all too real. There is no feeling of dreamscape here, the scratch of beard and softness of skin and the heat, the incredible heat._

_She revels in the ability to throw arms around him, push herself into his lap and feel him hard between her legs. She wants to use this body, accustomed as she is to having her time drain away, so limited and fleeting, and when she reaches out to kiss him she doesn’t hold back. _

_She lets herself taste and bite and writhe against him in relief at the contact she has waited for after who knows how many seconds or lifetimes. She maps his jaw, his neck, his hair with her fingertips, desperate to catalogue and keep._

_She hums against him and tries to get closer when suddenly _she is slammed back into the chair, morning sunlight now hurting her too sensitive eyes.

Salim is staring in concern as she holds onto the table, struggling to process what is happening.

“Shall we go to the porch, get you some air?”

She draws in a shaky breath and pulls the pieces of herself into place. She had thought to wait, to adjust, to get the lay of this new and not so new land before she sought him out _(and there wasn't a question, was there? of course she would seek him_ out).

The house, however, seems to have other ideas, humming and buzzing beneath her, a warning vibration that reminds her of a pouting, impatient toddler bouncing on its heels. She can feel it nudging at her, reminding her that she owes a great deal to this place, this space.

She laughs, breathless and a little manic, because this is the world in which she now exists and she’s being bossed around by a house that wants something back.

She looks up and smiles.

“First things first, Salim-not-Salim, there’s something I have to do.”

He shakes his head at the old nickname and watches as she closes her eyes, holding out a hand and trying to concentrate on that dragging, rushing pull.

When she had last been in this place it was always a challenge to sink into the belief, the openness necessary to gain access to the hoard. Now, however, it is like breathing.

She has to think only a moment and then almost laughs as she feels the expanse around her, runs her fingers over whatever her mind can conjure that she knows will be in there. She lightly strokes the spear, feels the sharp metal edges of knives and crowbars, smiles as cold metal discs slip through her fingers. Previously it had been cold and waiting; now she is filled with the sense of rifling through someone else's space, knowing the owner is very much present and likely to have some idea of the intrusion.

It’s like playing in someone else’s sandbox – she revels in her access, takes her time messily poking and prodding and stroking.

She sets aside the shiver of anticipation and concentrates on finding the fastest and most irritating way to summon him.

The answer is clear.

She calls to the coin, the one that hummed and rang lightly for her, the one that had left enough magic in her veins to let her reap vengeance and sow stories, the one that she had given to Shadow to stabilise him, the one that she can now feel like a glowing beacon within the expanse.

She plucks it from the hoard and holds it up with a sly grin.

That slight ringing is still there, but she doesn't feel the same infusion of strength as before, wonders if its because her myth is already tied to the coin and the magic it sent rippling through her body and over her tongue.

Still, it glints beautifully in the morning light.

Salim cocks his head.

She struggles to control the thrum of excitement in her veins and her eyes gleam. Her voice is low and she doesn’t bother to conceal the amusement in her tone.

“Well…chop chop, Ginger Minge.”

***

Shadow’s voice is low and shaky, worried.

“Why?”

Bilquis turns dark eyes in his direction and smiles. Ostara wonders whether she will reassure Shadow, so clearly concerned and wary about the new development, and still too green to hide the hope in his dark eyes. 

"We needed to progress."

"And she's the way?" 

Bilquis looks at Nancy, shares a smile with him.

"She was the catalyst."

Maman Brigette holds the feeling in her chest, hope and relief. The Baron is quiet but his pride is clear. 

The Morrigan is less trusting, her lilting voice full of caution.

"How can you be sure? Spirits have stuck around too long before, scorned wives and murdered lovers seeking vengeance have appeared as women in white. How can you know that whatever is answering these new calls is the same-" 

“SOMEONE'S IN MY FUCKING HOARD.”

The bellow cuts through the layers of smoke and death, through realities, an unbridled power that is not holding itself in check. 

Brigette and Samedi share a look of consternation. 

Bilquis quirks an eyebrow and the others stare as they begin to connect the dots.

Around the table there is awe and no small amount of respect, maybe even fear. 

Anansi recovers first, raising his glass to the head of the table, speaking loudly and clearly as the others follow his lead. 

"Long live the Queen."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the last bit gave you 'teenager having a massive tantrum in their room and interrupting the dinner party' vibes then you are not alone...


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the delay, kids. Life has gotten a bit hectic but we're nearly at the end of this, so please enjoy this chapter, and the next to be released within 24 hours.

He tears the door from its hinges and throws it behind him.

It’s an entirely unnecessary move his skin feels like it’s too tight and he needs to push the violence out somewhere.

He barely registers Brigette in the bar, let alone anyone else. The lack of sleep that has plagued him is no longer dragging him down, but his body is flush with adrenaline and a rising battle lust and his mind is shifting, shards grating on one another. If the self-enforced insomnia is impacting his thinking then he doesn’t bother concerning himself, too angry at the intrusion and attack on his treasure.

“Sweeney-“

He can’t be distracted, not when it might still be listening. He cuts her off, addressing something unseen, something he felt rifling around where it didn’t belong.

“How, how’d you do it? Fuckin’ dúr cac, think I can’t fuckin’ find you?”

He tries to feel it on the edge of his mind again but it’s fucking hiding like the coward it is.

Bad enough that some fucking beastie has been rooting around in his hoard - now he can feel what it has taken, and he can’t properly comprehend how this has occurred.

He doesn’t care. He’ll kill it.

“Fuckin’ go searching, will ya?”

The other voice is back, firmer now as it tries to catch him attention.

“Sweeney, baby, there’s somethin’ you shoul-“

His roar cuts off the sound he has barely been registering and he calls his spear to his hand, gives himself a moment to enjoy its dense weight, and bolts out the door and into the sunlight.

***

Shadow, having come up with the Loa to check the source of the commotion, swallows thickly.

Within the bar is a kind of considered silence, as if a number of people are wondering about the most appropriate next steps.

Shadow pipes up first.

“Should we…warn her? Go and help her?”

“Non, Baldur.”

Samedi chuckles low in his throat and moves to where is wife is staring out the door with meets his wife’s eyes, full of mirth and more than a little heady anticipation. Brigette’s eyes refocus on his and she shakes her head at his unasked question, her smile deeply amused and more than a little predatory as Samedi turns to look out the open doorway.

“It ain’t _her_ I’d be worried about.”

***

As he runs he feels himself take form, feels his humanity stripping away in preparation, feels himself move faster with the magic in his being able to run rampant.

The spear in his hand doesn’t slow him as he passes through crowds of humans without being seen because they don't want to see him. Dogs and cats bark, children twitch and point, but nobody has any interest in knowing a Fae god is bolting through New Orleans, and so they see nothing.

He pays no mind. There is a heady anticipation in his veins, propelling him forward towards the closest thing he’s had to a battle since that night when Wednesday’s blood had been spilled for good. 

He runs and feels the pull and shift of wind behind him, and then all around as he calls _it_ to him. It feels good to expend the energy, the power collected and reserved from more offerings than he’s had in centuries.

The rising, dragging pull of the hoard opens to him and he doesn't stop his stride.

He roars as he flies through, feeling the expanse around him open and wild, resisting the temptation to remain with the sun’s treasure glinting in his vision and cold against his skin, instead letting his feet determine the path through. The world opens to him again and he is landing on another road, not breaking stride as he continues to run.

The afternoon sun’s rays are glinting through tall trees as he lets his feet, his cursed feet, guide him, keeping his grip on the spear as he pushes himself forward towards something pulling so intensely it's like his whole being is a magnet.

The pull is getting stronger, his body moves faster and faster, and suddenly he is on a dirt road.

Dust kicks up around him and he stops for a moment, disoriented and then, as recognition hits and realisation dawns, he begins to move again. Harder and faster he goes until his feet pull him off the main road and down the winding path before stopping suddenly in front of the gate.

A land bathed in afternoon sunshine dappled through the tall trees surrounding it, sloping valley to his left, forest all around, and air rich with sun warmed flowers, herbs, and the barest hint of salt from the sea.

He is back.

The gate swings open without being touched, as if it has waited for him, but he doesn’t cross the threshold yet.

He stares at the house, swallows thickly.

Does it look more solid? More real? Clearer and stronger, welcoming and inviting as if on its very best behaviour? Does the heavy metal of the doorhandle look near close to quivering at the thought of being touched, are they windows or eyes, wide and warm and calling him inwards?

What kind of cruelty has brought him back here to this place?

_Laura fucking Moon covered in the blood and gore of a slain Grimnir._

_That smile. _

_He wants to fuck her, or push her buttons so she hisses and spits at him, or see if he can make her laugh, or ask her what the fuck is going on, or whether she’s really sending that smile in his direction and what, pray fucking tell, that means._

_He wants._

_He wants, he wants, he wants. _

_“Where the fuck have you been?”_

_And then she’s gone._

The memory, fresh as yesterday, bolstered with sacrifice, rocks him. It beats like a tidal wave against his mind, shaking his being even as he is flush with the power of that sacrifice still, a disturbing juxtaposition.

_“She wrote her story. Now get the fuck on with yours.”_

Brigette’s admonishment echoes in his ears and he has, by fuckin’ Bran he has, but months of being haunted have taken their toll (_is that what you call it, Ginger Minge? Fucking your way through tourist season in between being a god and considering flying away?_).

He gives himself a moment and then his head snaps up at the memory of shifting fingers running over the sun’s treasure and plucking out the coin that had kept _her_ alive, the coin meant for a king and used by a dead woman with the sweet sting of venom on her tongue and mischief in her eyes and given to Baldur to stabilise his power.

The coin that had left magic in _her_ veins.

The coin now fucking missing from his hoard.

Never again.

He steps forward onto his land.

As soon as his feet hit the earth he feels it, the swelling, swarming rush of power, enough that he can only stand and struggle to pull in oxygen. It floods him, reassuring and open, a kind of rich welcome. He can feel it feeding into and from him, feel the land humming and roiling beneath him.

He should have been here before.

He shouldn’t have come here.

The ill-fitting parts of his mind want to merge and blend and forge together but he shakes off the desire to sleep, to rest, to give over to this land drenched in sacrifice and belief. He forces back the desire to melt and be nourished.

He cannot rest, not yet.

His lip curls.

He thinks of Essie on the porch.

He thinks of the dreams he has had of this place, of her curled and reading with Salim, drinking whisky on the porch with Shadow. He wonders if she ever stood on the balcony upstairs and watched the sunset, knows somehow that she did and she it often.

He thinks of her last moments, of the battle she should never have been drawn into and somehow still made her bitch because she is nothing if not consistent.

He thinks of some fucking cunt poking and prodding where they’re not fucking welcome, laying hands in a place he’d only ever let one other being enter, taking his treasure as if they’re fucking entitled.

The battle fury, knocked away by the wave of pain and relief at being back at this place, is rising again.

He bypasses the sweetly humming metal of the door handle and instead kicks the door open.

***

The door flies open and she feels herself shift forms defensively, overprotective and too green to control herself and fucking furious at the intrusion before properly registering the man in the doorway.

She grips the coin in her skeletal hand and smiles.

The same being that had stood at the top of the hill and bellowed for Wednesday’s blood is now blocking their entire exit, familiar spear in hand and fire in its eyes.

For a moment she can’t breathe.

He is here.

In this house where she had first brought his body, where she had poured her grief into pillows and made a strange home both temporary and somehow unexpectedly eternal. Where she had discovered his world and shared it with Salim and learned and grown.

He is here where she had missed him so much it felt insane, where she had wanted him in and crowding her space with his usual smart ass and hurtful insight. Where she wanted to throw her learning, her trips to the library, her stories in his face and say ha, see, I lived, I _lived_! I win!

Where she wants to shout it at him now and know that even in her mockery he will be delighted to know she finally did it.

He is finally here and she feels something sharp and wild in her chest and she thinks, perhaps, she may want one day to name it.

And then, as usual, he ruins it with his fucking mouth.

*** 

"Where the fuck is it?"

He can smell it here, in the space, but refuses to look away from the man in front of him lest he run like a startled rabbit.

Salim, standing in the centre of the room with dark eyes flicking nervously to the spear he’s wielding, smiles at him.

"It is good to see yo-"

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

Salim is silent for a moment, squaring his shoulders and meetings his eyes with something intense and steely.

"Someone needed to hold the vigil."

Sweeney is momentarily impressed at the determination in Salim’s voice before the smell of something ephemeral and intrusive pricks at him again. It’s got the same feel as a Fae, or a death spirit, something magical and intermediary, something called into being but not worshipped so much as wanted. It’s new and dripping in the power of it. 

He stalks into the room, towering over the smaller man.

“You know who’s been rootin’ around in my hoard?”

Salim opens his mouth but the response comes from across the room.

“That’d be me.”

He freezes and turns slowly towards a voice speaking in many layers of midnight, strangely familiar, dark and haunting.

He doesn’t recognise the being in the living room, not from any waking moment, and yet it’s the sickest of jokes because he knows it. He has seen it night after night, he saw it in that fucking purgatory, he sees it if his eyes close for too long.

She is bathed in blue neon light, her eyes milky white, her ribs on display and autopsy lines carved across her body in blue woad. For a moment she's hard to look at, an unearthly glow as her white dress billows around her and her mocking smile tells him he'll be haunted and leaves him sick and willing. 

The last thought makes his stomach roil because, despite knowing too well how much the gods enjoy fucking with people, this seems a particularly targeted brand of cruelty.

_Something_ is wearing her face like a smooth, porcelain mask, smiling at him like it’s happy to see him.

“You.”

The thing that has been haunting him since he first fucking died stares back at him and he snarls, furious that it has come into this house, into this place. Furious that it is haunting him with _her_.

He raises the spear and swings it in a wide arc towards the creature, aiming for its jaw and missing when it moves far too quickly. It has the audacity to look shocked but he is faster, kicking out to send the couch into it so it’s pinned to the wall.

He ignores Salim’s outstretched hand as if to stop him, strides forward and grips the creature’s jaw, wrenching it upwards to force it to drop the act, quit with the form and show itself properly.

Instead it quirks a brow and raises one hand to lightly flick at him.

He is sent flying across the room and through the windows out to the front porch.

“Dude what the fuck is your problem?”

Fuck, even the voice is spot on, the midnight fading and leaving her sharp, catty tones behind. Everything aches from where it sent him flying backwards, shards of glass dropping from his back as he sits up and stares at the ghost, the harpy, the latest attempt at mind-fuckery his brain has thrown into his path.

***

From the front lawn he kips up quickly, though there is no warmth in his expression, and the distrust makes her tilt her head as he growls at her.

“You can’t be…”

“I’m fucking-“

“She’s dead, I fucking saw it.”

“-telling you I am.”

“Get out of my head.”

“Don’t blame me for your creepy-“

He clutches his head for a moment as if some pressure inside is trying to split his skull and then he laughs, a uniquely lunatic sound that rings of something a bit broken and a lot bloodied.

His laughter melts away as he bends at the waist, the words bubbling out of him like a messy spill that he mumbles and mutters into the ground and then up towards the sky.

“Trócaire, trócaire, trócaire liom cosaint dom ón spiorad seo. An bhean olc seo. An créatúr dorcha seo a chríochnóidh mé-”

“Quit the dramatics you fucking-“

She is cut off as he roars up from his bent position to head butt her into the side of the house, knocking the wind out of her. She rolls out of the way of the butt of the spear and feels herself ephemeral for a moment, slipping between worlds to avoid the potential harm. She grits her teeth and holds form, pushing off from a wall to land a kick against his chest.

It propels him backwards but he’s got the reach on her any day, the newness of her existence and the potency of belief weighing against years of fighting and a complete disregard for what happens to his oversized body.

“Laura!”

Sweeney freezes mid swing at Salim’s voice, eyes narrowing as if trying to see something clearly, and she turns to see the other man gesturing in a haphazard circle over his face. Realisation hits her like a freight train and she looks down at skeletal hands.

She shakes off her form, reaching through her layers and pulling forward one more painfully human.

***

Salim’s tone does it, the other man speaking with no sense of confusion.

He stares as the creature’s mask shifts and then she’s there.

Maybe she has always been and he’s refused to see her clearly, but he does now.

She’s fucking there.

Thin and boney, wide eyes too many people would mistake for innocent or sweet, pink lips and cheeks with a healthy flush. She looks nothing like the wrung out woman drawing her last breathes than he saw in the valley that day; there is no greying corpse flesh, no fragile skin, no lank hair. She isn’t the weighed down person he saw when she was alive, wearing so many masks she couldn’t see out of them and all too lost in the wilderness of her own bullshit.

Shiny brown curls and long lashes and chest rising with her panting breaths. She looks alive, more than alive, less animated corpse and more creature of flesh and belief, blood and hope.

She’s panting heavily and he can feel her, like Fae or Loa or some other kind of intermediary, so clearly _not_ human and so painfully fucking familiar it steals the air from his lungs.

“You.”

He feels his legs buckle and sinks to his knees, his spear slipping away to the hoard. 

She smiles, that same tiny smile she gave him in New Orleans when she found him drunkenly singing Jude's praises, and kneels down so that she's at eye level. 

“Me.”

***

She watches him register her, realise who she is, what she is, how she is. 

A part of her is all too aware that she doesn’t know him like this, not really. Whatever she felt in those last few weeks before his death, before she became a story teller in this house forged of luck and tenacity, before she hauled him back into existence and then died…she had felt alone.

That part of her wants to run, filling her with a fear strangely familiar, reminding her of a morning after in New Orleans when she had pushed him away.

But that is just one part.

The part of her that has owned her truth, has chosen to take up this mantle, that gave over her potion willingly because she saw something worth protecting…that part of her can see him.

She reaches out slowly, tentatively, brushing her fingers over his cheek as his trembling hands come up to her hips, tracing her through the robe and them pulling her closer against him. She feels him inhale deeply against her stomach as if trying to commit her scent to memory, feels his hands wrap tighter around her waist, feels the softness of his hair against her fingers as he turns his head up at her.

His eyes run over her, looking for some hint of falsehood, deception, illusion – she wonders how long he’s been lost and found in his own mind, wonders how well the splintered shards of his sanity have been holding up. She digs her nails into his cheek lightly, then harder, her thumbnail digging against where his lip as split.

The brief, sharp pain makes his eyes flash and seems to be confirmation enough that she’s no illusion.

“You’re here.”

***

Salim slips silently around the two beings in front of the house, sending a shy smile to the Jinn who is waiting by the gate.

"What the fuck is happening there?" 

Salim turns to watch them in the fading afternoon sunshine.

He shrugs, thinking of Bilquis as he reaches for the Jinn’s hand to lead him to the car out past the copse of trees. 

"A beginning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this all makes sense, bit tired but pushing to get this out lol. The shifting forms etc...if it's not landing let me know and I can re-write.


	24. Chapter 24

He stares at her and thinks of birds. 

Well, bird watchers. 

Not a sensible thought, perhaps, but his splintering, misty mind is struggling to pull or hold or wedge itself together, bolstered by the strength of the land and the feel of her nails in his cheeks. So he doesn’t argue with it, this time. 

Instead he remembers a quiet man at a bar somewhere near the Florida swamps telling him about bird watching, about the time he saw a grasshopper sparrow. He’d caught sight of it flying overhead, and while the little things were so rare as to now be considered almost extinct, he knew what it was.

The man, like most bird watchers, claimed he saw its giss. The essence, the element, the fundamental make-up of the creature at hand. The elegant combination of movement, wingspan, shift and drive.

Fucking Florida drunks. 

It strikes him that gods and deities are an awful lot like birds.

You can pick parts of them, read what’s underneath and all around, what binds them and brings them into being. If you're careful to see between the layers and threads, you'll see their giss. 

He hadn’t seen it at first, not when he laid eyes on the thing that had been haunting him, not when he’d thought it some deliberate and cruel attempt to throw him off and shatter his mind again. Not when, worse, he’d wondered if it was his mind the whole time, creating her from nothing.

He’d known, of course, that the signature was familiar. Not written in the same hand, but a fae hand, a hand operating out of mischief and mayhem and a hint of mourning.

He hadn’t seen the giss, though.

He sees it now, he thinks, perhaps.

He can smell hints of the graveyard and knows who carried her through the darkness, who would have pulled those pieces together and found them something to anchor to. He can see the shifting sparks of magic across her and knows his coin twisted fate, knows it has played a part. He can almost feel it against her tongue, and knows that the stories she told, the little ones she captured, the heart strings and memories she tugged in adults and elderly alike all forged this.

For a moment something in him expands, some kind of relief and genuine delight, pleasure, at her having chosen a path that included belief, or luck, or hope, or just choosing one that included life.

For a moment he lets himself stare at her, grip her hips and press his cheek into her hand and feel those nails dig deeper. He lets himself lean his face against her stomach, inhales the sickly scent of secrets and sharp fate and the pleasant aroma of parchment and the dust of old library books and there, something familiar, something he used to catch the occasional whiff of underneath the scent of rot and decay.

Something spicy and clean and _her_.

For a moment he lets himself enjoy the way her hands rest lightly against his bare shoulders and considers picking her up and taking her inside and exploring every inch of this newfound creature with the most familiar of faces, see how sharp her tongue really can be.

The moment flares and then immediately retreats and leaves something cold in its wake.

She chose nothing. This newfound existence was a ramification of her actions, maybe, but an unexpected one. She'd still poured out her offering and thrown away her chance, this just happened to be the outcome. 

She hadn’t needed to die again in the first place.

She had her pretty potion at hand, and everything she needed to run into the sunset.

She had her chance at a life. A real life. A renewal, rebirth, a new story she could have forged and grown and fallen in love in and fucked up and kept together and then slipped away into the darkness with a lighter heart and a head full of happy memories.

He stands, hands leaving her sides to cross over his chest.

He stares down at her, her pretty face and wide eyes and pink lips and that shiny fucking hair and there, just under the surface, glowing milky eyes and a body carved in woad and skeletal wounds. A shifting form, a wild thing bound by belief.

She could have had a life.

And instead she’s got herself stuck in it, in them, in this…forever.

Swapping her bug spray for self-sacrifice, a bowl of potion and an offering to bring a dead God back to life. 

The thought is curdled milk on his tongue, sour and slimy. 

***

She can feel Salim leaving and then they are alone.

She smiles.

It's not that she wants to. 

She couldn't stop herself from smiling if she tried, something shy and happy and quiet curling in her chest, even as she feels little calls on the edge of her awareness. She is in no rush, and can’t shake the strange bubbling feeling as he stands slowly, drawing his hands back from her hips as if suddenly aware that the contact she’d granted him would likely be revoked any minute.

He stares down at her and though it's hard to read the fire of his eyes, he's here. Heavy and taking up too much fucking space and really, really here. His voice is quiet at first. 

“It’s you…”

She doesn’t mind the repetition, feels her smile widening and doesn’t bother to hold back the light mocking in her tone.

“Yes it’s-“

“Why didn’t you take the fucking potion?”

Reality shifts for a second. 

The question knocks the smile from her face and she blinks at him.

His face is hard and he's drawn himself to his full height, staring down at her with that arrogant sort of demand that he used to get when completely fucking sure someone else was in the wrong. His arms are crossed and there’s something in her that wants to laugh because really? Fucking really?

“What?”

“You had it – you fucking had it from New Orleans. Why didn’t you take it?”

His words are accusatory and worse, it's as he can’t quite believe the depth of stupidity required to have made a decision of this nature, and she realises with a sharp breath that he is angry with her.

She narrows her eyes.

Oh…fuck no.

He stares down at her, clearly waiting for an answer, and she feels the familiar heat of her own anger rising.

Somehow, despite the decimated house around them, his own bloodied and bruised body, and the infinitely more interesting fact that she is back, alive as it were, here and having actually missed his sorry ass…_he_ is angry with _her_. 

“Are you fucking kiddin-”

She cuts herself off and swallows, tries to sound calm, because this is not at all what she was expecting from any of this. It's too much, processing it all while in this body both the same and utterly changed, feeling the call of little voices, all warring with the rising feeling of hurt crystallising into rage. Whatever she had expected on seeing him again, it wasn't this. 

If she can explain he'll get it, she's sure. 

“I am alive and -“

“Alive?” His laugh is harsh. “You’re bound and chained to their belief, you’re another fucking one of us-“

“I -“

“And you could have been alive, _proper_ alive.” He shakes his head in disbelief so condescending it churns her stomach. “Coulda had a fucking life, how could you be so fuckin-“

“Fuck you, you weren’t fucking here so how can you even-“

She can barely speak, feels her hands clenching into fists by her side, wishes she was taller and in more than a thin black robe because she wants, very much, to squish him under her hand.

***

Some part of his brain that is always operational no matter how pissed he gets registers the robe, her bared shoulder, the flush to her cheeks that he hasn't seen since...she was alive, the first time. 

His mouth waters. 

Whatever threads were pulled together to create her have been dedicated, she's the picture of fucking health and that's the problem, isn't it? 

She looked the picture of fucking health while alive and still hid everything, lied to herself constantly, and used the hot tub as a fucking promise to herself. She'd been the most beautiful woman in more than one room and still that part inside her had called for the bug spray. 

He'd thought, maybe, that being a goddamn zombie for a time had led to a revelation and yet when resurrection was offered she hid it from him, lied about the Loa, fucked off and didn't even take it when she had every ingredient. 

Still ready to throw in the fucking towel. 

***

He’s on a role, picking up steam and gesturing to punctuate his words.

“One opportunity to get your resurrection and you're so ungrateful for it you waste it telling stories and playin' house-“ 

The slap she cracks across his face is hard enough to force his entire body to turn, her newness and the makeup of her being coupling with her complete refusal to pull any punches. It is deeply satisfying, leaving a burning heat on her hand where it came into contact with his face, but she's shaking too hard to properly enjoy it. 

“Fuck you.”

It is, in hindsight, perhaps not the best idea. 

He straightens slowly, raising a hand to test the split of his lip, holding her gaze and shooting her a grin she’s seen far too many times before. It doesn't meet his eyes.

“Fuck _me_?”

She has never been one for overthinking risk. Being woven into the 'little dead storyteller who could' hasn't changed that.

“Fuck. You.”

She enunciates each word clearly. He is truly fucked.

There is a beat there where they both size one another up, and she can tell that in a past life he might have walked away, lit a cigarette and calmed his shitty temper down, gone silent for a while.

Fuck, she wants a cigarette. 

In a past life his eyes weren't fire, he wasn't heavy with belief and offerings, and it was she who wore a crown, flies though it may have been. 

In a past life she was a zombie and a good punch might have sent her arm flying and she could have turned him into a eunuch with one good grasp. In a past life he didn’t have the power he clearly has now, and she was a different kind of threat. In a past life one of them wouldn't have survived a tussle.

That was then.

She bends her knees slightly and lets herself shift, her vision pulling secrets and stories from the air, the magic around him crackling and flaring as her eyes change.

He spits blood on the ground but she refuses to be distracted and it pays off as she feels the pull of the hoard just in time to duck as he strikes out with the spear he's pulled from it. 

She dodges his wide swing and dodges under his arm, moving behind him and planting a kick into his back that sends him flying into the house. He topples awkwardly over the couch but rolls, kipping up and turning as she steps in through the smashed bay window. 

She grabs the nearest book and hurls it hard at his head. 

“Fuck you for fucking flinging yourself in front of Wednesday’s spear the first chance you got.”

She leaps back just in time to avoid the swing of his spear, lifting the coffee table and hurling it to put distance between them. He jumps in time to land on top of it, stepping down smoothly and kicking it back out of his way.

“Me?" He spins the spear and it stings the air above her head as she ducks and rolls to avoid it. "I’m not the one who flounced off after getting her resurrection bloody handed to her. Not a word to yours truly about that, mind.”

He steps forward but she's faster, sweeping his legs out and grinning as he falls backwards and smashes the coffee table beneath him. He curses a blue streak. 

“Yeah well I’m not the one who disappeared into my stupid fucking battle.”

If she’s completely honest, this is a time she is more than happy to indulge her lack of impulse control, because he is being eight different kinds of asshole and now she’s on a roll.

“Aye,” he kips upwards and lands a glancing blow against her cheek that makes her head ring. “You just decided to trust the first death goddess that crossed the fucking doorstep-“

“SHE KNEW YOU!”

The unfairness of the whole fucking thing makes her want to scream.

“AND SINCE WHEN DOES THAT BODE WELL?”

Whether or not he's got a point is neither here nor there.

He's got the reach on her, but the room is tight, his spear and height better suited for a battlefield, and she's fast enough to avoid most of his moves. Still, she can feel she’ll burn out faster, knows she’s too new to this, knows that whatever supercharged fun time she’s having will drain her faster, and while she’s not convinced he’ll genuinely hurt her, he’s angry enough that she doesn’t want to find out.

No matter, she’ll just hurt him first.

He dodges one of Salim’s herb pots when she flings it at his head and slams the butt of the spear into her gut before she can block it. 

She doubles over with an exaggerated gasp, waiting for him to approach and then landing an uppercut that sends him staggering.

“I’m not the one who stole a fucking relic as a final 'fuck you' like a goddamn teenager pissing off Daddy!”

There's victory in her voice but she's not smiling, finding herself angrier and angrier at his spin on events.

He tests his jaw and, finding it unbroken, growls and kicks the armchair towards her hard enough to send her flying. 

“No but you sure as shit found a use for-“

She pushes herself up from the wall, hurling a log from the fireplace in his direction as she does. 

“She wanted to get rid of Wednesday! We had to-”

"Cut the shit." His voice is harsh as he catches the log and hurls it into the wall, the wood embedding itself into the side of the room. "You're not some fucking saviour, things like us never are." 

The words are like another blow and she's distracted enough to that she barely dodges his fist. 

"You wanted to end him and if it meant being a fucking martyr for your own bullshit then why that was just fucking dandy." 

A tiny part of her brain reminds her that this is what he does, he pushes, he tries to strip back and locate every last fucking bit of honesty and slam it home with no lube. The same part might even have admitted he would have been on to something a while back. She doesn’t lie to herself anymore, doesn’t question that her preference for risk, her impulsivity, her dances with bug spray and inviting strange, large men home to fuck her roughly was at least partially born from an innate desire to see if a survival instinct would kick in.

A lifetime ago he would have been right.

But she remembers the morning of the battle. 

_Something clean and whole has settled in her throat, rests deeply in her chest, and suffuses her body with knowledge._

_She is Laura and she wants to live._

_It’s a jarring thought and it’s warring with enough other emptiness and grief that it tries to hide itself, but after 27 years unsure of it she lets the knowledge settle and harden against her bones. Maybe it’ll reinforce them enough that she gets through this on her terms._

_"Give up something, and then give up everything."_

He swings the spear again but this time she grabs the end of it before it lands, the movement giving him pause and her voice low and cold.

"Do you know how tired I am of fucking gods telling me what I want?" 

He shrugs off the chill she leaves against his skin and swings a backhand that she ducks easily, retaining her hold on the spear and cracking it back against his cheek so hard his vision swims. 

"You fuckin'..." he puts distance between them and the sunlight hits the crown around his shoulder and it’s so pretty she’s nearly distracted by it. 

She circles warily. 

***

The milky eyed nightmare in front of him fights like a demon and sounds every bit the ungrateful fucking brat he’s gotten used to. Something about the denial is pricking at him hard and he growls, swinging wildly.

“You could have left. Fucked off him, all of it – you could have run.”

She's fast, dodging and jumping back, pissed as hell. She's gritting her teeth like she has a fucking leg to stand on and she's beautiful, she's so fucking beautiful and such a complete bitch. He can’t do this, not with her, can’t follow her down a rabbit hole and just find her dead at the end of it, lost by her own hand and refusal choose life.

“I had the chance to stop him; we _had_ to stop him.”

She's trying to him to understand something and he can't believe he's here again. Luck is pricking at him as a warning and his gut is saying it's off but he's got to get out of this now, he can't play lap dog and watch her wipe herself out or worse.

Her calm tone makes his blood boil and he doesn't bother holding back as he slams the spear through an unbroken window to punctuate his point.

“AT WHAT FUCKING COST?”

“ANY FUCKING COST!”

He is momentarily frozen by the raw pain in her scream, the sharp sound tearing away a veil, and he gets a glimpse of agony underneath the venom she's throwing his way. For a second she's a thin, scrappy woman with wide eyes full of hurt. 

She's Laura. 

He knows then that he's made a mistake, that he hasn't listened to the pull in his gut and the warnings on his skin were trying to tell him.

He is floored, wants to hold her, to ask her what he's missed, to beg forgiveness or offer his throat, whatever she wants. 

And then she throws him through the window.

Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear this was meant to be sweeter but then...it wasn't. 
> 
> Responses to reviews coming soon, I'm sorry again for the delay but so grateful!


	25. Chapter 25

She can barely think now, the rage and the unfairness of this bullshit from him of all people making her feel insane, and she plants a kick in his chest that sends him out the shattered bay window and across the porch.

The sight of him flying across the yard is deeply satisfying, and she gives in to the moment of pleasure it brings.

He lands heavily on the lawn but she darts forward without waiting for him to get up, reiterating her point furiously.

“Any. Fucking. Cost.”

Her vehemence seems to make him pause and she takes the opportunity to step on the spear, pushing it out of his hand and landing a punch in his jaw and sends him backwards with a sickening crack. For a minute her vision blurs and she’s in a dreamscape.

_“I will have my spear. I will have my war. And you, Laura Moon, will return to the nothingness in which you belong.”_

_His smug smile as he sullies her space, his mouth opening before her eyes into an enormous maw, ready to devour, to eat every last piece of hope and connection available, to decimate myths and legends and use their blood to marinate every ounce of power for himself._

_His power flinging Salim into that tree, leaving Shadow bereft and unstable, mocking her with memories of a meathead now left for dust._

Her chest is so tight the words strain against her throat as she knocks him back to the grass again.

“Was I supposed to just let him take everything from me?”

_Hauling his oversized body up the road._

He pushes back up but she dodges the spear and kicks him in the knee as she continues.

_Rumpled sheets and flecks of dried blood where his body had been._

“Again?”

That tightening in her throat makes the word come out higher, softer than she wants it to. 

_Feeling used, again. Betrayed, again. Like she’s a fool. _

_Again._

_Knowing the game was rigged and playing anyway._

He straightens up and stares at her in a kind of shocked understanding, as if picking up on something, so she takes the opportunity to throw him through the front of the house. 

The crunch is sickeningly loud, a crack that echoes down into the valley.

She has no interest in his insight, stepping in after him and flexing her fingers as if to dispel the rising, cloying pressure in her throat, the feeling of panic and rawness in her chest.

If he’s moving more defensively now rather than advancing, if he’s holding his hands towards her as if trying to calm a wild animal, she refuses outright to notice. No part of her make up is ready to respond to anything less than this rage pouring out of her.

His words are barbs in her skin and she wants to tear them out and show him how fucking wrong he is about her. She pulls a piece of window frame away and flings it at him hard enough to impale him if he didn’t knock it away with the spear.

“_I_ DIDN’T WANT TO DIE.”

She runs around the kitchen island and grabs the glasses by the sink, throwing them one at a time into the wall next to him, the shattering a satisfying punctuation to her increasingly pain laden words.

“_I_. Didn’t. Die. On. Purpose.”

He flinches, his hands up in front of him and he takes a step towards her but she has felt the room shift, felt his fight dissipating, and can feel the prickling wetness in her eyes beginning to build.

She hurls a plate that hits him squarely in the chest, dropping to the floor and shattering. He doesn’t bother to block it, a cut appearing and fading almost as quickly, leaving a trickle of blood oozing over the blue lines on his skin.

“_I_ DIDN’T CHOOSE TO FUCKING GO.”

Another plate, this one thrown wide. His stillness, his refusal to strike back, makes her want to scream.

She can’t swallow the lump in her throat. It makes her feel exposed and stripped and angrier than she’s ever felt and she couldn’t stop the words even if she wanted to. She grabs a handful of cutlery from the sink and flings it in his direction, no longer caring whether she hits him, the metal clinking mockingly as it falls.

“I didn’t want to leave!”

It's a pathetic cry into the afternoon light, the lump making it hard to breathe. 

It’s too quiet now with him standing silent and their bodies no longer tearing the house a part and nothing but her hurt, her pain on display. She can feel the prickling in her eyes as she thinks of the helplessness, the unfairness, the fucking loneliness of her demise. 

She picks up the bread knife and slams it through the edge of the kitchen island with a scream to try and displace some of this intense, overwhelming emotion. 

The sob that rips through the otherwise silent house is so pathetically human she wants to scream through Backstage and splinter into fragments of herself. Sure she’s meant to be above this now, but as she looks at him and thinks of him fighting with ravens and electrocuting himself hotwiring cars and being mocked by Nancy as he’s left in exhaust fumes she knows that’s not true.

They’re above nothing.

She would laugh, because there’s an odd kind of reassurance in knowing she was right, they were just as fucked as everyone else, but that fucking lump is choking her and his words have taken a toll.

Bullshit, fucking bullshit.

He doesn’t move, just stares, and she glares at him defiantly even as the tears stream down. She pretends they’re not there.

“You have no idea what it was like.” She inhales, tries to steady herself. “You were gone and I was alone.”

When she speaks her voice is small and strangled and she fights the urge to run because wet and pathetic it may be but it is _her_ voice and she will say what needs to be said. He stays still and silent, as if all too aware that this spell will be shattered if he moves, and the fact that he doesn’t want to shatter it makes her chest feel tight and pisses her off more. 

“I hadn’t been that alone since…” she draws in a shaky breath because she has no intention of admitting how lonely she used to feel, how her stupid cat dying had left her feeling it so deeply she turned to Robbie of all people to block out the sound of nothingness.

She forces herself to look him in the eye and it’s clear he know, that he understands, and she forces herself to push past it rather than scratching his eyes out.

“But I was. She knew that.”

It’s not an excuse, for once, but it’s plain and honest.

She struggles to spell out what it meant to have the Morrigan appear with her hints and suggestions. To describe the budding hope and frustration and fear. The thought of ending Wednesday, of getting her life back, of getting...other things too.

She thinks of dark, liquid eyes and a kind smile and someone willing to be her friend and try. She doesn’t fight the grim little smile that tightens her mouth.

“Then Salim came…and then…I felt less alone." Oh the understatement of that friendship, of his warmth and willingness to share, of his stunning vulnerability. "…I had something to do that was…”

What was it? Important? That wasn’t a word she’d associated with anything she ever did while alive. But that’s what it was. It mattered, it had an impact, one she could see and feel.

How to describe discovering hope, having it taken away, and still trying to spread it outwards?

_“You been traipsing around like you’re above all that, like you’re better than those who dreamed us into existence….hear me, girl. Those who came before you called us into the night and drew us into existence and fed us again and again with stories and their blood until we were here and that is more than you, Laura fucking McCabe, ever did in your damn life.”_

How to describe the familiar helplessness, being buffeted by an uncaring god, another piece on the board…only to have Nancy tell her to stop acting as if she wasn’t a part of the story?

_“You want to use the story for yourself? You gotta become a part of it, willingly.”_

How to describe the stories?

How to describe doing something that wasn’t for her own benefit, and somehow being nourished by it? An act of petty vengeance that spawned into something so much more, magic slipping over her tongue even as death wasted her away, delighted smiles as she made coins appear and then the sparks in their eyes as she shared faery tales and myths and legends. The humming connection building and spreading like veins across the country, pumping with stories and memories and shared, shared, shared connection.

She gives up, stops fighting against the tears and lets them pour over her cheeks, lets the fear and the unfairness of it all and the relief of being back here consume her, lets herself lance the wounds and bleed cleanly over the house.

“Wednesday wanted to eat it all – wanted every bit of belief.” She swallows thickly, as if she can pull the lump back down into her stomach, but it stays there firmly as if forcing the moisture into her voice. 

“I wouldn’t have cared. But belief isn’t just belief…you things…” she laughs quietly. “Us things…we think it’s belief that they need but it’s not." 

_"You take and you take and what do you give people back? Nothing."_

What she'd missed for so long, been so dismissive of, so sure that it was only idiots who wanted to look up at the sky and see patterns and journeys. The thing that drives them forward, makes people take the next step, reach for other hands and fall over the edge into love or loss or life. 

"It’s hope.” That’s what they are, why they exist, what they push and pull and twist and drink down to continue surviving. That’s why he’s flush with power, so many little offerings from open hearts. That’s why she exists at all, something wanted and needed requested from the universe by enough voices that she became a reality.

Something to wake up for, continue for, fight for, create for. Something that means you leave the lid on the bug spray.

She shakes her head. “He couldn’t take that.”

She straightens up, wipes angrily at her tears with the sleeve of the robe, struggles to sound clipped and curt.

“That day when the battle came, we were losing.” The sounds, the flickering in and out of godly battles.

Bilquis gently leading her down the path to her potion, letting her understand the final ingredient, absorb what that meant about her, for her.

“We needed something back that could tip the scales. Turn our luck around.” She tries not to laugh at that. “The potion was the way to do it. You were the way to do that. You what we needed.”

She pushes herself to say the last of it.

“You were what I needed…to stop him. To finish the story and leave him behind in it.”

She draws herself up to her full, deeply unimpressive height, and stares him down.

“So I chose. And I’d choose again.”

He’s staring at her in a kind of fascinated wonder, the way he looked at her the day she sent Wednesday to the ground, and she rolls her eyes.

“Whatever."

She pulls the coin, the one she’d poached from the hoard in a misguided attempt to get him to come and play, out from fuck knows where. It hums lightly against her fingers, catches the afternoon sunlight like the gold of his crown, and stares at it a moment before flicking it in his direction.

"Here.”

He catches it without looking and sends it away, for once not fixating on its gleaming surface or the relief at its return. 

Her face feels hot and tight and itchy and wet.

She turns away and stares resolutely out the window to the valley below, hoping more than anything she can disappear.

She can’t, she knows that, and she’s not going to. Not here, not now.

She bites her lip and closes her eyes and then she feels him behind her and she doesn’t bother to fight the urge to lean back, slightly, against his bulk. He doesn’t touch her at first, but as she melts against him he brings his hands to her shoulders, big and warm against her cool skin.

For a moment he doesn’t move, but she feels braced, anchored against something big physically, against something ancient where she is greener than green, against someone who could see her clearly and still wanted to anchor her.

He lets his hands drift down to wrap around her stomach, and she lets him hold her.

They stare into the valley below, likely aware they’re thinking of the same moment, but he holds his tongue and so she holds hers too, for now.

And just like that, the fighting stops.


	26. Chapter 26

He doesn’t say a thing and she doesn’t ask, doesn’t need to. He’s heard what he’s heard, and she’s said what she’s said. So now he holds her and it strikes him that he's never done this, not in reality, not in this plane of existence. 

He's had her bony hands dig around in his pockets for cash and fuck knows what else. Felt her press into his side and she slammed her boot against the accelerator while they chased a beam of light. Grabbed her against him to pull them both through the hoard, back when it cost him more power than she could realise, refusing to let himself consider her hair against his wrists, her body against his stomach. He's lugged her sorry corpse pieces and gorey bits to a car trunk. 

He's felt her come apart around him on an astral plane while the Loa laughed unheard. Had her writhe against him in a neon lit club called purgatory. Had her haunting his dreams and occasionally his day time. 

But this is something else. 

He can feel her tensely refusing to let the sobs spill over, feel her slowly allowing inch after inch to lean back against him. He's not stupid, despite all evidence to the contrary; he knows this is a rare occurrence and that she'll just as likely throw him through another window over on a different day. 

But today she lets him hold her, so he lets himself enjoy it. 

He waits, quietly, as she sags against him fully, and knows not to fuck this up, knows that after their little tiff (he refuses to glance at the house behind them or consider the bruises they'll both be wearing tomorrow) she won't be able to force herself to stay open, or her version of open, for much longer. 

Looking down into the valley below he can feel the hum of magic beneath and around them, in her. It's oddly tantalising, something familiar and foreign, and he tests the newly woven threads of fate around her, the parts that make her up. 

Something pricks at him, like running his fingers over silk threads with thorns on them, and he wants to smile. 

She tenses as if she knows he's looking for something, and he decides talking would be unwise at the moment. 

He turns her carefully, and she lets him.

She lets him lift her, setting her on the kitchen island and planting a hand either side of her hips.

Lets him bump his forehead against hers, pull her hips tightly against him.

Lets him breathe her in, run his nose against hers, so close he nearly grazes her lips. 

Lets him wrap her around him until he can cup her jaw and run thumbs over her cheeks, smearing tears against her skin and studying her.

He can feel her; wild and dark and prone to the occasional melancholy but fiercer now, as if brought closer to the surface and willing to be seen rather than hiding. Something that had thought of vengeance but found purpose, balanced against the undeniable brat of her being.

And something else.

She has the whiff about her of something offered; the hope, the belief, it was strong enough to soften the universe into considering creation but not so strong as to demand it.

A choice, then.

Laura Moon got given another fucking choice.

The scales or the call of the story.

_“I don’t believe in luck….God is a fairy tale for grown-ups…you things are not gods by the way. You’re made by people, people who need answers and they’re too fucking lazy to look for themselves.”_

She chose the fucking story.

He doesn't fight the grin that splits his face. 

She narrows her eyes and he's on thin ice but the grin won't go away, not when he can smell it on her, feel it against her. 

She chose, she chose, she chose.

It wasn’t forced on her, this new existence.

It was given freely, and she took.

"You chose."

It's not a question but she nods anyway, slow and stiff. 

He captures her giss, her essence, the fundamental make-up of her actuality, where it exists and the reason for its existence.

***

He doesn’t apologise for being an asshole and she is oddly relieved because he’s always going to be one. Words are hollow, easy, but she can see this sinking into him, see him absorbing and processing and drawing his own conclusions.

When he had grinned, wide and wolfish and wild, she had wanted to push away. She'd held firm, refusing to be mocked, and now she realises quickly it's not amusement but genuine surprise and delight on his face.

His form shifts, the Fae king melts away and then she's staring into hazel eyes and a face that, by way of that lunatic grin and the genuine pleasure in his expression, looks younger in that moment, as young as anything that old can really be.

Her eyes decide this merits further tears and she gives in to it, pleased and relieved and raw as all hell against him.

His grin shifts to something darker, more subdued. 

He runs a thumb along the edge of her robe, skimming her ribcage where blue woad had previously stood out like autopsy scars, and she shivers. 

He holds her gaze as he speaks.

“Show me.”

***

She shifts.

It’s not a request and when she complies he wonders what manner of being she is, whether there’s any hint of Aos Sí in her make-up, if she fucked her own story by looking too much like a faery herself when she went to those playgrounds.

Not a grotty little pixie with its nose all out of joint and spindly fingers, but something of the spirit world, or the later myths that saw them as creatures of beauty and horror all at once. 

She’s lucky she didn’t wind up with wings.

She's beautiful like this. 

He traces her jaw, the lines of her collarbones, traces woad covered autopsy scars down her chest. Her pupil-less eyes track him, narrow and following him warily, and he wants to tangle with her, doesn't fight the urge to push his luck.

He knows she’ll bite. He’s counting on it.

He wants to run his fingers through the threads that make her up, try to isolate and understand the bits and pieces of them, identify where Laura exists and how she has melded this new creature into being. He wonders which of his threads would call out to hers, and which others have borrowed and begged and bartered from other stories.

She is death and life, the in-between of existence and the birth of stories.

He meets her eyes, still wary, the milky glow not hiding her tears. She studies him back and he doesn’t bother hiding the admiration on his face, the desire, the heat of the battle lust burning away under something darker.

He can see it now – there was no new story for her than this one. Her brittle warmth, her sharp love, only Laura Moon could turn vengeance into a new lease on existence. Only she could have found purpose in her slow ending, could have refused to back down again and again and again, refused to take “they fuck with us” as a good enough answer. Only she could amuse and tickle the universe so much that its laughter rippled out to turn atheist non-believer Laura Moon into a goddamn otherworldly being.

She’s turned haunting into an art form, ascendant. Entitled fucking nightmare of a woman.

When he traces her cheekbones she moves imperceptibly closer into his hand, eyes flickering as if to close. He can feel himself hard, wanting her, wanting this. 

She regards him with that bored impatience she has perfected and he knows that she knows she’s beautiful.

He grins, knows he’s got veneration in his eyes and more than a little worship on his lips as he leans down to her.

“You’re still a bitch.”

She laughs, the kind of wet and joyful laughter than springs from your throat when it is tight from crying and the tears continue to pour down. It’s a sound both human and completely inhuman at once, echoing around and through him, and then she is Laura again, skinny and sharp and edges all over, soft lips hiding teeth and venom.

In the wake of that sound he does the only thing he can think to do, the next line in the story completely unchangeable, unmalleable, unavoidable.

He kisses her.

***

It’s not a romantic kiss.

Let us disavow ourselves of that notion. 

It’s a desperate kiss, a kiss built on something started half a year ago and taken before it could bloom, something continued through dreams and books and belief more than actuality.

It’s nothing stolen in a dream scape, softly lit on an astral plane, or dragged into existence across multiple realities by Loa magic on the eve of a great battle. 

It’s disturbingly real.

He tastes like blood, his beard scratches her skin roughly, his lips are dry and his hand is too tight in her hair. She presses against him, desperate to taste and feel as much of this as possible, cheeks still wet and nails digging into his shoulders to pull him tighter to her. 

It won’t be their last kiss.

They’ll have soft kisses and passionate ones, they’ll have violent kisses mid-fight used largely to shut one another up rather than give in, and they’ll have desperate kisses after near misses that could have left one or both of them in the dust.

They’ll have early morning ones so lazy they’re less kiss and more languid movement, and they’ll have drunken kisses shared between themselves and others they have invited in or been invited by. They’ll have kisses in cars, bars, and under stars, kisses on wounds and kisses grazed against knuckles.

But right now they have this kiss, salty with tears and sweat and blood, in the kitchen of a house that luck built as the sun sets behind the trees.

She coils against him, pulls him into her, wants to taste and take and burn this into her mind, the fibres of her existence, have it sink into her like Salim’s tears. He’s all too happy to oblige, pulling her against his too large body until she’s overwhelmed by the smell of wood and smoke and salt and sweat and the tang of blood, the familiarity making her eyes prick all over again.

As far as first kisses go it’s exactly everything and nothing like one should be.

It is perfect. 

Soon, sooner perhaps than propriety would suggest is appropriate, kissing will not be enough.

Soon her arms will wind around his shoulders and she’ll make a sound in her throat he finds too interesting not to try to get her to make again. 

He'll pull the cord of her robe, stand back a moment to watch it fall, to drink her in as it slips down her shoulders. He'll take his time until she squirms, impatient and hot under his gaze. He'll kiss her again, hands cupping then moving down her jaw, over her shoulders to grip her ribs and skim the undersides of her breasts and tighten against her ass as her thighs squeeze against his hips.

He’ll push the last of the robe aside to feel the softness of her thighs and the sharpness of her hipbones.

She'll tangle her fingers in thick hair and pull him tighter against her, smiling against his mouth as he groans into her lips. He'll press fast, hard kisses down her jaw and bite against her collarbones, feel her legs hitching around him as he pushes her back to lick, bite, suck at her ribs and breasts. 

He’ll coax low moans and then a sharp cry from her, exploring her centre, thumb skimming over her clit and then fingers moving into her. She’ll grind against him, gripping at the counter top, her head tipping back.

He'll taste her, committing the tangy lemon of her centre to memory, gripping bruises into her thighs and drawing keening mewls from her as he takes his fill. She'll grind and roll against him before her legs begin to shake and she holds him still, a sound like a sobbing laugh spilling over her lips as she freezes, over sensitised. 

She'll recover quickly, pulling him up to her with desperate hands that make quick work of his trousers and wrap around his hard length. 

Soon he’ll be pushing into her, swallowing the gasp the entry pulls from her throat, her thighs tightening against him for a moment to let herself adjust. He'll force himself to hold still for a second as she plants a foot against his chest to accommodate the stretch. 

She’ll recover fast, faster than she should, urging him forward and laughing bright and breathless as he complies roughly. Their breathing will speed up, panting breathes and the occasional growl as she braces one foot against the island and pushes back against him.

He’ll roll his hips against her and she’ll hiss and reach a hand between them, his movements slowing briefly as he’s distracted by the sight in front of him. She’ll growl, sharp and threatening, and he’ll pick up his pace, thrusting into her hard enough that he can watch her tits bounce.

Soon she’ll start to tumble over and he’ll grip her jaw to keep her eyes on him and she’ll let him watch her fall until it’s too much, her head tilting back to hit the island. He’ll leave bruises everywhere, kissing and biting and gripping whatever he can get his hands on before he follows her over.

Time will slow for a moment. 

He’ll slump forward against her chest, listening with a kind of shocked wonder to the sound of the heart beating in there, pressing his hand over her ribcage to feel it thump against his palm.

She’ll let him.

They won’t talk for a long while, neither willing at first to fracture this fragile quiet. She’ll know he’s thinking of New Orleans and wondering if her newfound existence will neutralise her urge to deny, to run, to throw up walls against the world. He’ll feel her heartbeat slamming through her ribcage against his cheek and give himself over to satisfaction and something more, something joyful and bright and maybe even hopeful and at the very least fucking relieved.

He will be overwhelmed for a moment by the wave of exhaustion, the kind of tired a body can only really experience when it has pushed itself too long, when a mind has finally found space to rest. It will feel as if the land around him is determined to flood him with peace, taking advantage of the blanking of his mind between Laura Moon’s lean thighs to infiltrate and demand he rest.

She’ll feel him grow heavy, hear his breathing even out somewhat, and roll her eyes.

She’ll push him off slightly too hard, robe staying open as she slips off the kitchen bench. She’ll let it slip from her shoulders and leave it haphazardly strewn on the ground, walking past the decimated living room and down the hallway. 

He'll watch her with confusion and fascination at the amount of new skin he’s seeing. He’ll stand there a moment, mouth hanging open dumbly as she disappears into a door. 

He’ll hear a shower being turned on and then her voice, sharp and impatient, will echo down.

“Are you fucking coming?”

And he’ll grin, because of course he fucking is.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lucky last, Laura's 27.
> 
> The briefly mentioned wrapping in a blanket burrito manouver is called the "Laur-ito" and was invented by the incomprable Ettume.

**Epilogue**

**An obituary**

_Laura Moon, age 27, of Eagle Point Indiana was killed in the early hours of Wednesday morning in an automobile accident._

_Laura loved her work, her friends, and her family._

Hours later the bedroom is still, sheets in disarray.

They have given themselves over to heat and sweat and bruises, trading showers for stairs and then a bed with balcony doors thrown wide. 

She keens her release into the pillow and slumps forward, her hair sticking to her cheek and his heart thundering against her as he pulls her back against his chest to wrap his hands around her. Every part of her aches and she raises his hand to her lips, pressing a light kiss to it before nipping hard. 

"Fuck, is beag cac tú-" 

She twists and takes advantage of his tiredness to push him off the edge of the bed, falling back against the pillows and laughing as he hits the floor hard. 

She throws a book at his head, smiling when he catches it. 

"Food!" 

He rolls his eyes before standing, bare and comfortable, stretching and disappearing out the door and into the darkened hallway. She lies there a moment, listens to the wind and the sounds of rattling and shuffling downstairs, the occasional curse and then a short laugh of victory.

When he returns he’s laden with fruit, a halwa, thick slices of bread with sharp cheese between them and a bottle of vodka she knows hadn’t been in any cupboard of Salim’s. Her mouth waters and she sits cross legged, eyes gleaming as he sets his plate down along with the last two unbroken glasses.

She crunches her way through a crisp, tart apple and tells him about libraries and the different myths about him, about others. He interrupts occasionally with a laugh, a correction, or a snort of derision and more than a little irritation. Once or twice though she sees him smile, and she’ll stay on the story a little longer, spinning her craft for fun.

He lets her tear a bit of his sandwich as she describes gods appearing in the house at will, and he crows with raucous laugher as she talks about calling Wednesday short in a dreamscape. When Laura describes Bilquis and Nancy having breakfast at her table he laughs, more interested in the time Bilquis appeared in her bathtub.

She forces him to try the halwa and then refuses to let him have any more as he tells her about New Orleans, offerings, and luck. As he describes Brigette cock-blocking him she laughs so hard she worries she’ll bust a rib, and he embellishes his stories just to keep her laughing, taking advantage of her weakness to steal more halwa.

She is full, sated and nourished, and the bed is soft.

He pulls cigarettes from thin air and she feels the smoke burn her throat for the first time in half a year, washes it down with cold vodka and humming with pleasure.

The sound makes him reach for her and she darts away until she has finished enjoying her prizes. He falls back to the pillows, watching her pace around the room and enjoy the breeze on her skin, watching her stretch and sip her vodka on the balcony. When she lights another cigarette, the smoke curling around her and disappearing into the night, he feels his eyes begin to droop.

She is here, and smiling.

Laura watches Sweeney’s eyes grow heavy and wonders how long it has been since he’s rested properly. She moves back to lie next to him, steal his vodka and watch him drift away.

He crashes hard, deeply, clutching her against him and sprawling across the bed and for a while she lies there and listens to his deep breathing. She watches the stars out the window and remembers many nights here alone spent watching those stars, that moon, and feeling the ever creeping darkness as her body decayed. 

Now she is full and strong and the reality of it is overwhelming. 

She slips out from under his arm, letting it flop back over his face, and moves to the window. 

The night breeze cool and pleasant against her bare skin. She stretches, smiles as her muscles twinge, happy to know this aspect of existence is still something of hers.

The light breathing in the bedroom stutters as he rolls over, searching for her in his sleep, and she watches him.

_“Do you miss him?”_

_"...I guess."_

_She considers his question. _

_"All up we were only travelling like 2 weeks. I've been here longer. It's not like we were together."_

_Salim is quiet and she says what she hadn't wanted to say. _

_"It felt like a lot longer." She thinks and then shakes her head. "That's not true...it's not that it felt that long, it's just that it didn't feel done. It was the beginning, right at the start of something, and then it was gone."_

_She lights a cigarette and wishes she could taste it but the habit is reassuring. _

_"And that's just me. Who the fuck knows what he thought."_

She doesn’t know what this is, not really.

But she will keep him.

And, possibly, let him keep her.

She smiles to herself, debates throwing a pillow at him, but decides in this instance to let him have the rest.

She should crawl in next to him, take advantage of his warmth against her aching body. But she feels tired but also unable to sleep, crackling and electric, unwilling to close her eyes lest the last 24 hours disappear. This morning she had returned, herself and something else entirely.

She moves to the oversized mirror against the wall. 

The reflection in the mirror shifts and she sees Essie, smile full of mischief and knowing eyes, and Laura slowly raises her hand to touch the glass. The reflection follows her action, slow and gentle. She could swear she can feel the pads of calloused fingertips, feeling breath against her cheek as she steps closer, and when she studies the other woman she finds herself returning Essie’s smile.

For a moment she feels the house shift, the world pulse, the vibrations of belief in the land react. It’s gone quickly, and feels like more of a kind greeting than the possessive connection she can feel it has for him. It’s not hers.

But it likes her, nonetheless.

She blinks and then it's just her, alive and glowing and bright, shiny hair and cheeks flush with health. 

The breeze shifts and as the moonlight hits her she lets her form shift, gives herself a moment of vanity as her skin gleams, holds her skeletal hand to the light. She studies her bare body with its woad marks like autopsy scars, watches her milky, glowing eyes.

“Beautiful.”

The voice should make her jump but she is somehow unsurprised, has wondered when this visit would take place.

She doesn’t turn but smiles at Bilquis’ reflection, no longer bothering to ask herself why this space seems so open to gods appearing at will. A memory pricks at her.

_“I’m-“_

_“The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. What are you?”_

She gestures to herself.

“So, what was I?”

Bilquis smiles, knowing and amused.

“Something wonderful.” 

Laura watches the woman behind her.

There are things that need to be said.

At a sound from behind them they both turn to the bed where he’s taking up too much room, one leg out of the covers and an arm thrown behind his head as he breathes deeply and evenly. He grumbles something that could be a threat, let's out a snore, and one arm raises as if to swing. 

She rolls her eyes because he's a fucking idiot.

And here, alive. And so is she. 

What she has to say next is quiet but she cannot keep the emotion from her voice as she watches him take up too much space, hog the blankets, a nuisance even in his sleep.

“Thank you.”

Bilquis tilts her head.

“You are born of their belief, not-“

“Salim and the book, Nancy, the Loa, the offering,” she shakes her head. “…I’m new but I’m not dumb. You did this.”

Dark eyes full of secrets search her face before making a decision.

“You still had a part to play.”

Laura knows she won’t get much more out of her, but can’t help trying.

“Why?”

This gets her a smile, warm and slow.

“Even gods need something to believe in.” She walks to the window, the moonlight making her skin glow and her eyes gleam.

“Wednesday’s hunger would have consumed us all. Gods are rigid, incapable of growth beyond what we are given. They lack the ability to see beauty in variety, to understand the fragile complexity of humans.”

She turns and runs gold tipped finger nails through Laura’s hair, watching as the moonlight catches the shine in it.

“They cannot see that we all have our roles, our parts to play. When a part is missing, we all suffer.”

Laura looks back at her reflection and tilts her head.

“So…I’m a part?”

“You are magic.”

“Like a unicorn.”

Bilquis laughs at that, low and smooth, and Laura can’t help her own smile.

She knows exactly what she is and a part of her rejoices. She can still feel her darkness, knows she's as bound as the rest of them now, but as her body aches and her bones hum with a deep, languid satisfaction, she cannot find a thing to regret. 

She doesn’t need to enquire about Bilquis’ motivations; she can see them writ large on the woman behind her.

The goddess is all – the power rolls off her not in hectic, violent bursts, but in gentle waves. It’s not a power seeking to harm; it is one bigger and deeper than the ocean, too vast to need to lash out, constant and roiling and wild. It is vast, more, excessive and rich.

It is power amplified and controlled.

It is what happens with the goddess of love takes a woman bereft, a potion missing ingredients, a battle for connection or destruction, a man with gentle eyes and a heart full of faith, and calls the universe to her will.

It is what happens when the universe answers, and other gods see it.

It is what happens when the gods themselves believe.

Laura looks over her shoulder at what might be the most powerful deity in existence and smiles genuinely.

“Thank you.”

When Laura turns back to the mirror she is alone.

She bites her lower lip before exhaling slowly, the goddess’ presence always throwing her a little off kilter. She turns and walks back to the bed. 

His arms find her and he pulls her close, silencing her mild grouching with a kiss before they both drift off to dreamless sleep.

In the morning she’ll steal his coffee before realising she is still starving. She will raid cupboards and eat a makeshift picnic while stark naked on the porch. He’ll smoke in the doorway and watch her pale skin in the morning sunlight, staring at her as if blinking might make her disappear.

Soon, they’ll start to explore the mess that is one another, together.

Days will pass mapping skin and tasting every inch and laughing and fighting and reading and fighting some more just for the fun of it. She’ll make him carry her around just to annoy him and show him how to make mushaltat and he’ll pull her through the hoard to take her to the ocean near the valley. They’ll play cards on the beach and she’ll demand an ice cream and he’ll tell her about the time, about the time, about the time…memories he hasn’t had in years and still can’t always trust. But more real, more solid, and more plentiful than they had been for some time.

Soon she will follow her calls and read stories in playgrounds and parks and his cursed feet will demand they hit the road, the house remaining with Salim, a point of contact and place of return for the two of them.

Soon libraries around the country will have little Laura McCabe reading their stories as a special guest, her bookings always a welcome surprise, their systems somehow registering her without anyone recalling why. The children and their parents, grandparents, family friends will be delighted, and nobody will comment on the giant man accompanying her.

He’ll glare at staff and then, when no parents happen to be looking, he’ll make coins appear and little eyes will widen and they'll laugh as he lets them tackle him. He’ll chase them in mighty battles and fake dramatic warrior deaths and when they leave offerings later he’ll pluck and strum at the threads of luck he can find, and pull melodies together for them.

Soon they'll get drunk together, starting fights in bars and laughing as they run from riots. She'll decide that breaking into department stores to rearrange mannequins is a necessity and he will follow, game for her shenanigans like a well-worn toy happy to be dragged around. She'll make him drive up street after street of Christmas lights and he'll tell her to keep out of his bloody hoard and she'll ignore him entirely. 

He won’t mind, not really.

Soon there will be good days and then the occasional bad, where she'll feel the darkness cover her the way it had when she'd been human. He will pick up on her melancholy and wrap her tightly in a blanket, tucking her against his body and letting her be angry and tired next to him. Eventually she'll be coaxed out with candy, spitting venom to prick him into a fight, and he'll laugh and hold it too high for her to reach. 

Soon they’ll spend wild nights at Coq Noir where the Loa will delight in their success and her existence. Brigette will teach her the Banda and taste the salty of sweat of her skin while Sweeney watches with hungry eyes and the Baron smiles his midnight smile until the bodies are hard to tell apart. Between ecstacy and astral planes there will be laughter, and food, and stories, and the occasional prank that will, at least once, leave Sweeney with a tattoo and neither Brigette nor Laura willing to fess up. 

Soon they will find Shadow in trouble somewhere called Lakeside and help fight evil and she will hold her former husband very close and he will do the same. They'll collide again and again. Soon they will feel the rumblings of New Media and a bruised but not broken Mr World as they start to devise new power plays. They’ll see real mermaids and tangle with the wrong Brownies and be visited by the Dawn. He'll show her faery rings and she'll start fights with other spirits and he'll haul her away over his shoulder as she loudly abuses gods far older than her. 

They’ll piss off New Gods with gaps in their teeth and debts owed and they’ll delight tricksters who know the value of stories and they will owe a blood favour to the Queen who is too powerful to ever need to call it in until the day, of course, when she does. 

Soon, they’ll have adventures, and journeys, and more than a few battles, and they will be chained to and freed by belief.

When they come back to the house Salim will be there, quiet smile and more than a little time. He and Laura will make bread, and laugh, and read together. Sweeney will revel in the ground soaked in belief and more than a little magic, enjoying his time before quickly growing bored and seeing how much he can annoy the Jinn before a fight starts, or convince the ifrit to go out drinking.

Very occasionally, early in the morning, she will find him reading one of her books about myths, and legends, and she’ll watch him quietly before leaving him in private.

The house will become a place Laura calls home and Sweeney will say nothing because as long as he’s with her he’s already there.

And they will create and exist in the mess together. 

He will pound into her, hard and rough enough to hurt, and then they’ll drink milkshakes in bed. She will bully him into fitting that hulking body into the bathtub and get water everywhere as she rides him. She will suck him off against stolen cars and steal his jacket when she gets cold. She will get him drunk and have him fuck her in the ass on the kitchen table and then eat fresh baked bread and drink coffee there the next morning.

She will argue with him. And eat. And feel the sunshine on her skin. She will to explore strange places and piss people off. She will make bread with Salim and tell more stories. She will have him heavy on top of her, panting into her neck and then laughing as she pushes him off the bed. They will make a nuisance of themselves and love every second of it. 

Together.

That is all to come.

For now, a New Being and an Old God sleep in a house that will have repaired itself by morning, next to a valley drenched in gods-blood and belief, as the summer breeze blows through the balcony window, carrying the scent of honeysuckle and herbs into the bedroom.

And all is right in the ‘verse.

_Fin_

_Post script_

**An updated obituary**

Laura <strike>Moon</strike> McCabe _(aka the Dead Lady;_ _Storyteller_), ageless<strike> 27</strike>, of <strike>Eagle Point Indiana</strike> the house in Virginia and whatever car is easiest to boost that day, was <strike>killed</strike> reborn a deity in the early hours of Wednesday morning i<strike>n an automobile accident</strike> after a series of insane and more than a little peculiar circumstances.

Laura love<strike>d</strike>s her work (_especially when she's called by little ones having a hard time, when she can bring light to otherwise dim eyes, and see the hope in their hearts_), her friends (_especially when she watches Salim pray and then laugh while picking herbs, or when Shadow takes her dancing_), and her family (_particularly when the Baron is cooking gumbo with garlic and extra mussles, and Brigette is telling stories of the dead and the living and Lugh and lifetimes, and she is perched on Sweeney like he's a fucking couch, his arm slung low around her waist, his chest against her back and his laughter in her ears_).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And just like that, you bloody legends, we're done.
> 
> This has been a helluva lot of fun to write and that is 100% down to the fact that it has been so much fun to share with you. To everyone who has reviewed and kudos'd and read and engaged with this, thank you so much. Thank you for the support and generosity and sharing your theories and generally making this feel like a very long, very fun chat with friends.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.


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